This title takes a look at the world of reference and trivia. It contains facts and wacky lists such as: "Long live the King" - did you know that the peony is the king of flowers; "Mime, the great Healer" - a look at proverbs which remain true when they are changed by one letter.

Vitamin Q

Lumsden, Roddy

Reference

Chambers Harrap Pub Ltd

In his tenth collection, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2017, Roddy Lumsden returns to some familiar themes: the trials of oneness versus twoness, the seduction of small calamities, and vice versa. And the everyday mysteries of running water, salt and sugar, and roller-skates. There are also many `conflation poems' where Lumsden has knocked the square peg of one subject through the round hole of another, often music-related. There are poems here about many songs and musicians, ranging from cult artists like Alex Chilton and Robin Holcomb to big names like Elvis and Morrissey. As ever, he relishes unusual words (nestlecock, twofer, farnesol) and interesting, taut forms, alongside a new strand of mid-length, discursive pieces in the spirit of Chicagoan poets Albert Goldbarth and Marianne Boruch.

So Glad I'm Me

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Bloodaxe Books

In 2013 the poet Roddy Lumsden suffered a serious concussion. The head injury left him devoid of creativity, impersonating himself in an effort to rediscover his own identity. Four months later, a late night conversation led to a radical experiment that would see him return to writing with a daring project. This book is that extraordinary work.  As the poet says, "The series of plaintive poems entertains the idea of sentimentality. It encourages fetishes, by which I mean repeated references and name dropping. It is 'hand on heart' stuff. Sweeping, indulgent last lines, often. Emotional, evoking the mood I found myself in as I recovered, solved."

Melt and Solve (Salt Modern Poets)

Salt

Yeah Yeah Yeah is a large and varied debut collection which uses the lives of lovers and losers, eavesdroppers and entertainers to explore romance, faith and last orders at the bar. The poems are formal but with a frantic edge; they are lyrical, but laced with a cruel streak and a measured done of indulgence.Roddy Lumsden is concerned with how relationships shift and twist and restore an order, with how people meet and part. The poems range over weddings, revenge and phobias, beer, girls and the need 'to get these answers right'.

Yeah Yeah Yeah

Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

Roddy Lumsden's first collection, Yeah Yeah Yeah (available from Dufour), was shortlisted for both the Forward and Saltire prizes. These new poems eavesdrop on a half urban, half surreal world of ladies, men, and misfits, trying on roles and acting out fantasies. The Book of Love is a celebration of love in all its delightful perversity, whose characters include a randy actor, a vinegar addict, and couples courting in a cupboard, covered with marmalade. As voyeurs sneak into one poem, naturists streak across another, and there is the inevitable lurking presence of the poet's own (rich but square) alter ego.

The Book of Love

Throughout Mischief Night the rhymes, the larks, the brutal punch-lines tug Lumsden's poems off the page and into the living context they describe."" - Verse

Mischief Night: New & Selected Poems

Third Wish Wasted is a book concerned with our wishes and desires. Belonging to a world between real and imagined folklore, the poems are by turns celebratory, humorous, and beguiling, and there are bittersweet contemplations of youth, beauty, and fame. Roddy Lumsden is one of the liveliest and most inventive poets writing in Britain today. His fifth collection strays into denser and more musical territory, as well as sticking with the form and wit which typifies his earlier work.

Third Wish Wasted

The Message

Arts & Photography

Music

Poetry Society

Paperback. Cover design by Owen Benwell. Some wear on spine ends and leading corners. Text is clear. AF

Roddy Lumsden Is Dead

Wrecking Ball Press

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Books by Lumsden, Roddy