Tim Liardet

During a record-breaking blizzard in Boston, two poets met, one American and one English. This meeting marked the beginning of a life-transforming love affair. The story is told in The World Before Snow, Tim Liardet's tenth collection, a book of passionate extremes, in which he discovers new dimensions in language and form. The poems document some of the ways in which a particular species of love can allow for the rediscovery of identity, as all the fragments of persona previously put forth to the world are stripped away to expose a raw new self.

The World Before Snow

Tim Liardet's ability to be surprised and enlightened by experience, his relentless curiosity, and his formal skills, create poems of marvellous dramatic pace and intensity. His extended and refined lines cover subjects as diverse as sex, taxi drivers, and icebergs. A number of the poems are concerned with love, desire, and emotion -- often in very physical forms -- through a wide-ranging, constantly changing, use of detail and example. Liardet's previous collection, Clay Hill (1988) and Fellini Beach (1994), are also available from Dufour.

Competing with the Piano Tuner

Fiona Sampson

Sam Riviere

Clare Pollard

Polly Clark

George Gömöri

John Mole

Carol Rumens

Attila József

Derek Adams

John McAuliffe

Wayne Holloway-Smith

Tom Warner

Anthony Dunn

Jacqueline Gabbitas

Ágnes Lehóczky

The Balassi Institute Hungarian Cultural Centre London launched its new project ‘Inspired by Hungarian poetry: British poets in conversation with Attila József’ in celebration of the Hungarian Culture Day on 22 January 2013. On 22 January 1823 Ferenc Kölcsey – one of the most important literary fi gures in Hungarian history – completed his manuscript of the Hungarian National Anthem. Since 1989 Hungarian culture is celebrated on this day. To mark this special event, the Balassi Institute Hungarian Cultural Centre London invited British poets to contribute to its new project with a poem of their own written in response to the poems of the Hungarian poet Attila József (1905-1937). The original idea of the ‘British poets in conversation with Attila József ’ project came from Tibor Fischer, the internationally renowned British writer of Hungarian origin. The aim of the project is to raise awareness and appreciation of Hungarian poetry among readers in the UK through initiating a poetic conversation between renowned British poets and selected poems of the outstanding Hungarian poet Attila József. The Hungarian Cultural Centre asked British poets to respond to a selection of Attila József’s poems in English translation, put into English beautifully by John Bátki, Edwin Morgan, George Szirtes and Peter Zollman. The present online anthology, published on 11 April 2013 – the birthday of Attila József and the National Poetry Day in Hungary – is the product of the poetic ‘conversation’ between Attila József and more than a dozen of his present-day British counterparts. A gala reading in London on 11 April 2013 celebrates the occasion of the launch of the anthology, Attila József’s work and poetry.

British poets in conversation with Attila József

Inspired by Hungarian poetry

Tim Liardet

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