Uncanny Nu

Quite unlike anyone, Bright is hard to fit into the contemporary poetry scene. Late Modernist? Anti-populist, certainly. Skilful, undoubtedly. But is he ‘a secular deacademisized Hill, shorn of the reactionary Albionics’, or even ‘a non Marxian Prynne relinquishing the relinquishment of ‘meaning’’? Leaping the apophatic chasm, persisting through the gamut of this immense first collection, each new poem ‘like a Swiss watch wound in a Waunarlwydd wounded by Dalí,’ do we sense, if only borne by form, pentimenti of the ‘poet’ as painter, composer, actor, musician, graphic artist, songwriter, maker of mazes? Demanding. Nakedly untimely. Not for everyone.’ Llabrys Cordoglio