John Hawke

Fans of lists in Finnegans Wake will appreciate Javant Biarujia’s new book of poetry, Resinations. Many of the most amusing juxtapositions in the volume derive from the arrangement of proper names, drawn from (most) high and (very) low cultural references presented as cubistic materials in simultaneity.

Michael Farrell, on the other hand, a leading experimental poet of the next generation, is published by Giramondo – his previous volume, A Raiders Guide, was perhaps the most stylistically provocative book to have appeared with a recognised commercial publisher. Drawing on the Russian formalists’ exploration of the autonomous poem-as-machine, these radical fragmentations highlighted ‘The Word as Such’, and even ‘The Letter as Such’, in their concentration on the visual and sound properties of language.