The Blood Choir

　　'The Blood Choir' is Tim Liardet's masterly new collection. Well known for the intricate complexity and subtlety of his style, this new book will surprise readers with suddenly dramatic subject matter: teaching poetry in prison. This meeting of refined style and dark, sometimes violent incident leads to poems that recall Goya's Black paintings in their sombre grandeur. An acutely observed incident is recalled and given a multitude of per spectives, and each perspective resounds with an emotional corollary - sometimes fear, often sympathy. Movingly, he is without condescension: his prisoners are fellow humans who share a disturbing destiny. The vision is dark but is is not without humour, there is a playful inventiveness and an adroit irony, often at the author's expense. As well as the work inspired by the prison there are digressions: several pieces stem from the foot and mouth outbreak, The Lumbar Region is a witty paean to a bad back ; there is a five-page poem in tercets about a famous Soviet serial killer called "The Zero Key".