Bøger af John Tottenham

The eagerly anticipated new volume of poetry by acclaimed author and artist John Tottenham.Tottenham's previous collections—The Hate Poems; Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment; The Inertia Variations (a multi-media interpretation of which was released by Matt Johnson, otherwise known as The The, in 2017)—established him as this day’s leading contemporary poet maudit.Fresh Failure features a deepening and broadening of Tottenham’s trademark Magical Cynicism and Magnanimous Misanthropy. With hilariously ruthless ruminations on the artistic ego and the romantic id, Tottenham gives voice to the kind of thoughts most people prefer not to express but will automatically relate to and be entertained by.  It's the kind of poetry that is accessible to people who don't read poetry (i.e., everybody). Fresh Failure is ultimately a Triumph of Failure, and proves, as Jean-Luc Godard said, that poetry really is “a game of loser take all.”

John Tottenham writes poetry. But don't hold that against him. It's the kind of poetry that is accessible to people who don't read poetry, i.e. everybody. This new collection, 'The Hate Poems', presents a further elaboration on the themes addressed in his two earlier volumes - 'The Inertia Variations' and 'Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment'. In elegantly-wrought laments of self-deprecation and hateful love poems, the author finds that he has more to say on already exhausted subjects, and gives voice to the kind of thoughts most people prefer not to express but will automatically relate to and be entertained by. Poets are doomed, among other fates, to repeating themselves. Another potential fate is to be consigned to a world of embittered obscurity, and this is the world that Tottenham restlessly inhabits and relentlessly explores. He has staked out a singular terrain where egotism and self-loathing meet, where futility merges with urgency, and beauty is created out of bitterness. He furnishes mesmerizing proof that a poet maudit can still, if not thrive, at least survive, alive and unwell, in this benighted age, and that the dregs can sometimes be the cream.