Mischief night: new & selected poems

Roddy Lumsden is one of the liveliest and most inventive poets writing in Britain today.

From the formal, frenetic debut Yeah Yeah Yeah, through the playful wit and cynicism of The Book of Love, to the magnificent song to himself of Roddy Lumsden is Dead, his poetic journey has already been eventful and he remains fascinated by the intrigues of men and women and the short steps from real life to folklore to the surreal.

Mischief Night brings together the best work from Roddy Lumsdens three previous collections, as well as a whole new collection, The Drowning Man.

It also contains poems from his pamphlet The Bubble Bride and the previously uncollected sonnet sequence Cavoli Riscaldati.

Sharp, bright and utterly heartbreaking, this collection by one of the most intriguing voices is alternatingly roguish, curmudgeonly, insecure, and tender.

The speaker woos and teases, cajoles and repels, withdrawing before beginning again.

Though the poems offer no utopian promise, no deliverance, they cut to the quick with the difficult truth of longing, need, and the salt of hopelessness.

Monique Tschofen, New Delta Review There are tremendous narrative poems, mysterious, lingering onesand unforgettably realistic tales of melancholy sexual encountersLumsden is a brilliant vivisector and pathologist of the contemporary relationshipall we can ask for in poetry: contemplation, intelligence, stylistic beauty.

Like a spreadsheet of a morality adventure, like perfectly articulated paina helpless celebration of Lifes adventures Alan Warner, Scotsman