LONDON: Robert Stein launch

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011, 7.30pm upstairs at The Betsey Trotwood
Clerkenwell,
EC1,
nearest underground station: Farringdon.

Oversteps Books and Robert Stein are launching his new collection, The Very End of Air.

“Rarely have I read such concentrated, densely-packed and powerful poetry. It is as if a huge and strange force were contained within a little room.” Hugo Williams

“Robert Stein is a redoubtable craftsman with a patient ear for the timing of the line. His poems in The Very End of Air are both skilfully dexterous and formally patterned, whether operating as gleeman (which he does with a consistently kempt wit) or starkly surveying his protagonists through compelling time-travel sequences. In fact Stein’s ‘Seven Women’ series —possibly the best poem here — forges a new model for the dramatic monologue, memorialising voices of ur-women through an act of transubstantiation. Few poets in England could accomplish this with such finesse.” James Byrne, Editor, The Wolf

“The poems in this remarkable, wide-ranging collection are varied but cleverly interwoven into a whole, with extraordinarily memorable lines. In a series of dramatic monologues including Christendom, the Old Testament, famed figures from the worlds of literature, art and music, along with poems set in England, Scotland and Wales, Stein proves himself a virtuoso in ventriloquy. His craft is passionate, honed. He sometimes uses a deliberately naive direct lexis reminiscent of Éluard or Prévert, and takes oblique angles tinged with humour. The poems, with their startlingly accurate and original images, resonate after their endings. The whole collection is a tour-de-force.” Patricia McCarthy, Editor, Agenda

Robert Stein

http://www.overstepsbooks.com/cat/the-very-end-of-air/