When a lover wilfully disappears, what do you do? This book answers that question by charting the baffling, the hurtful and the quotidian, in a sequence of revelatory and penetrating poems. The inexplicable is not explained away, but it is held boldly up to the light. Accompanied by Jessica Palmer’s sharp black and white images, My Lover as Houdini is a courageous, spellbinding collection, scored through with emotion and honesty.
Universally captivating, Sir John Soane’s Museum in London is a labyrinth of evocation and imagination. The result of a first ever poetic residency there, The House of Everything takes the reader on a personal and allusive trail through this labyrinth, opening up the museum’s spaces and collections through spellbinding word and image, and probing the impulse within all of us to make material our dreams and imaginings.
”We were delighted to have Robert Seatter as our first poet in residence at Sir John Soane's Museum. His work brilliantly captures the experience of exploring Soane's romantic and picturesque home with its complex layers of allusion and illusion, interpreting this famous place and its collections in new, surprising and emotive ways.“
Helen Dorey, Deputy Director and Inspectress, Sir John Soane's Museum
”This book builds itself into a series of collages, images intricately overlaid to illuminate one other. The poems move lightly, not just from room to room, but between the chambers of the heart, through shadowed spaces to jewelled windows to doors that might let in the rivers of the world.“
Imtiaz Dharker
