Independence Day moves on from previous work, while still retaining some continuities in theme, style and approach.
It is a book of journeys, literal and metaphorical, making use of ekphrastic techniques.
The poems here start out from north London, taking the reader to San Francisco, New York, Baku, Kuala Lumpur, France, Russia, and back again, while remaining firmly grounded in the writer’s locale.
As ever, political realities and social issues are not neglected; these poems move to a contemporary music without losing seriousness of purpose without resorting to agit-prop.
’the reader enters a world that is personal but always worked out against a detailed social backcloth. It’s a politics of everyday that comes through.’ - Jim Burns, Poetry London Newsletter
'it is a pleasure to find work that has something to say and says it with with and perspicuity.' - Vernon Scannel, Ambit
'such a generous spirit, as well as a writer of honesty, perception, and sensitivity' - Maura Dooley
Brian Docherty writes well about politics and survival/exile. - Ian MacMillan, The Wide Skirt
'Brian Docherty is a poet with a rather original way of seeing the world. Sometimes this leads him to begin a poem with an intriguing point-blank assertion (which he may go on to substantiate); and sometimes it causes him to veer off from his apparent themes along unexpected tangenitial digressions. His poems can be enigmatic; and yet they can also have the pithiness of epigrams.
Docherty has a distinctive voice and the subtlety of his observations means that his work repays re-reading.' - Michael Bartholmew-Biggs, London Grip
Comments