The Blood Choir

'The Blood Choir' is Tim Liardet's masterly new collection. Well known for the intricate complexity and subtlety of his style, this new book will surprise readers with suddenly dramatic subject matter: teaching poetry in prison. This meeting of refined style and dark, sometimes violent incident leads to poems that recall Goya's Black paintings in their sombre grandeur. An acutely observed incident is recalled and given a multitude of per spectives, and each perspective resounds with an emotional corollary - sometimes fear, often sympathy. Movingly, he is without condescension: his prisoners are fellow humans who share a disturbing destiny. The vision is dark but is is not without humour, there is a playful inventiveness and an adroit irony, often at the author's expense. As well as the work inspired by the prison there are digressions: several pieces stem from the foot and mouth outbreak, The Lumbar Region is a witty paean to a bad back ; there is a five-page poem in tercets about a famous Soviet serial killer called "The Zero Key".

Tim Liardet is the author of four collections of poetry. His third,'Competing with the Piano Tuner' was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and longlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize in 1998 and most recently 'To the God of Rain' was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring 2003. Parts of the new book have already won the Smith Doorstop Pamphlet Competition and as a collection-in-progress received an Arts Council England Writers' Award, both in 2003. Tim Liardet was born in London. He is a graduate in History from the University of York and for two years undertook post-graduate research, subsequently working in many fields including cabinet-making, information technology and marketing. He is now Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Studies at Bath Spa University. His poems have been widely published in The Guardian, The Independent, London Review of Books, The Malahat Review, New Statesman, New Writing, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry London and have been broadcast on BBC radio.