A Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Following the exceptional acclaim for his first two books, Paul Farley might have been forgiven for resting on his laurels with his `difficult third' - but Tramp in Flames instead finds him driving his formal ambition and remarkable imagination harder than ever.

A book of considerable emotional daring and sometimes Wordsworthian sweep, Tramp in Flames is the work of a meticulous archivist of our cultural memory, and sets the palimpsest of the present hour on a light-box. It also shows Farley rapidly becoming one of the definitive English voices of the age.