De Chirico's Threads

De Chirico's Threads, the new collection of poems from Carol Rumens features an unusual centre-piece, a verse-play, fizzing with ideas and surrealist imagery, based on the life and work of the Italian painter Georges De Chirico, as well as forty pages of distinctive and beautifully crafted individual poems by one of the UK's best poets. An acute socio-political awareness, sometimes satirical, sometimes tender, inspires a number of pieces such as the distopian vision of '2084', while 'The Tadpole goddess'is a clever alternative nature poem. Her delight in form is displayed in the series 'Six Sonnets on Petrarchan Themes'. Also here are poems about various places in London, such as the Crystal Palace rail Station and 'East Ending' which celebrates an old music hall. Sophisticated, playful, relevant and humane, a new collection by Carol Rumens is not to be missed.