three regrets and a hymn to beauty | new poems / Ian Wedde

Ian Wedde's work always brims with life as well as learning and his poems are meticulously crafted, his books beautifully constructed. The long poem or sequence has always been a natural vehicle and you could also say his entire corpus is so closely interconnected that he continues to write one long discursive poem. Here he gives us five extended poems that lope along in a wonderfully relaxed and rhythmic way exploring the concept of beauty and the nature of language. These are serious philosophical topics and Wedde sees them that way but he writes with such zest and energy, uses such a range of references and echoes, has such wit and humour, that reading is always a pleasure even if you are soon panting for breath. This book is a marvellous example of a mature and confident talent responding with imagination and delight to the local and the familiar: this is a world of friends, streets, paintings, advertismeents, songs, memories. A poet like this enables us to see our own world freshly and alerts us to the wonders delivered to us by our senses.