London Bridge: (Salt Modern Poets)

London Bridge is Simon Smith’s fourth collection of poetry, and his third with Salt. New to this accessible book is the way each poem can stand-alone or feature as part of the main sequence, a sequence which has its roots, with its author, in the place and mindscape of South East London. This book is a new development for Smith, explicitly locating the poems in the geography and history of this almost bypassed corner of the Capital, taking in the ghost traces of Blitz bomb damage; the everyday life of the Old Kent Road and A2 grafted over the first arrival of tramping Roman legions; the ghost of Robert Browning; and Telegraph Hill, the navigation point for airliners, holidaymakers, terrorists and business people into Gatwick and Heathrow. This collection continues too the humour and wit of Reverdy Road and Mercury with a nod towards the New York School, via the world of virtual reality and the vogue for poetry anthologies, as well as the incisive precisions of e.e. cummings or William Carlos Williams. Versions of poetry from other languages also figure in London Bridge. The Orpheus and Eurydice story is revisited in Rilke’s re-telling; a translation of Apollinaire’s last poem, `The Auburn Stunner’ appears tracing the junctures and disjunctures of war and love; and the poems on the death of children by the Roman poet Martial lend a darker vein and further dimension to the collection. This is a book that sifts and collects the data of a life lived in the City amidst the immediate and contingent camera-shake and confusions of the everyday.

Table of Contents:
On Telegraph Hill Address Martial, Book I Poem 7 CCTV Ode on a Grecian Urn Bob’s Day Online O.E.D. That Love Thing A 53 or a 172 Personal Note Michael Anniversaries `Bye, bye’ Green Shield Stamps Stereogram Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. `A’ for Apple In the `On’ Position Imagist Poem Operating System Fish Cake Woodpecker Martial, Book V Poem 20 Fly By Night Board Games 1984 Deep Breath Red Dots Choo-choo Converse Martial, Book V Poem 34 Least Most Il Penseroso Rather Like Orchestration Oyster Card Designs Martial, Book V Poem 37 Moment About the Mountain Honeymoon History of the Good The Auburn Stunner Goering Open Browser Tryst Self-Portrait in a Bathroom Mirror Martial, Book X Poem 47 Puerile Allegations Questions of Beauty Two Times Table The English Peacemaker Hurdy Gurdy Man First Idea Objects of Desire Text How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix Martial, Book X poem 61 A Table

About the Author :
Simon Smith, born 1961 in Redruth, Cornwall, brought up on the borders of Hertfordshire and Essex. Educated at the University of Kent at Canterbury, he lived in Pennsylvania from 1984–1986 where he threw in an academic career for one in librarianship. He has worked at the Poetry Library in London since 1991, and became Librarian in 2003. He edited GRIllE (1991–1993) and was poetry editor of Angel Exhaust (1998–1999). He is one of the judges for the National Poetry Competition 2004 along with Elaine Feinstein, Ciaran Carson and chair Denis MacShane, the Minister for Europe.

Review :
Extraordinarily intoxicating and quite envy inducing with its quicksilver shifts and inner reflections.--John James I, who always urge more severe editing ... would not wish to have a page less of this oeuvre ... because Smith succeeds in elevating poetry above the poem.--Barry Schwabsky Readers looking for imaginatively complex engagements with twenty-first-century Britain should try more ambitious kinds of volume. I recommend Simon Smith's flicker-book sequence Mercury.--Jeremy Noel-Tod