Soft Sift (Faber Poetry) [Paperback]

A collection of poems that exhibit enormous casual elegance of mind and style, at the same time being friendly, touching and funny.

We are pleased to announce the publication of eleven more titles into the new typographic look. The specifications for the books are high -beautifully produced, they all have flaps and are sewn and printed in Italy. The latest batch represents some of the core titles of the backlist (Philip Larkin's Collected Poems, Ted Hughes's New Selected Poems, James Joyce's Poems and Shorter Writings) along with key, single volumes that should be part of any poetry lover's library (and whose reissue, in the form in which they were first published, will give a whole new generation the pleasure of coming to the books as original readers).

Mark Ford was born in 1962. He has published two previous collections of poetry, Landlocked (Chatto & Windus, 1992) and Soft Sift (Faber, 2001). He is also the author of a critical biography of Raymond Roussel (Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams (Faber, 2000), and a collection of essays, A Driftwood Altar (Waywiser Press, 2005). A second volume of critical pieces, Mr and Mrs Stevens and Other Essays, will be published in May of 2011, as will his translation of Raymond Roussel's Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique. He teaches in the English Department at University College London.

Twenty Twenty Vision

Unwinding in a cavernous bodega he suddenly

Burst out: - "Barman, these tumblers empty themselves

And yet I persist; I am wedged in the giant eye

Of an invisible needle. Walking through doors

Or into them, listening to anecdotes or myself spinning

A yarn, I realise my doom is never to forget

My lost bearings. In medias res we begin

And end: I was born, and then my body unfurled

As if to illustrate a few tiny but effective words" -

But - oh my oh my - avaunt. I peered

Forth, stupefied, from the bushes as the sun set

Behind distant hills. A pair of hungry owls

Saluted the arrival of webby darkness; the dew

Descended upon the creeping ferns. At first

My sticky blood refused to flow, gathering instead

In wax-like drops and pools: mixed with water and a dram

Of colourless alcohol it thinned and reluctantly

Ebbed away. I lay emptied as a fallen

Behind distant hills. A pair of hungry owls

Saluted the arrival of webby darkness; the dew

Descended upon the creeping ferns. At first

My sticky blood refused to flow, gathering instead

In wax-like drops and pools: mixed with water and a dram

Of colourless alcohol it thinned and reluctantly

Ebbed away. I lay emptied as a fallen

Leaf until startled awake by a blinding flash

Of dry lightning, and the onset of this terrible thirst.