Sins of the Leopard: (Salt Modern Poets)

Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize This remarkable debut sees tales of treachery, guilt and love play out against the whole canvas of history. Empires rise and fall; the beasts of Britain stalk from the age of Rome to the new age of austerity; heroes and villains take their stands on the Sussex Downs and on the Pennines, from the Death Star to Dancing on Ice. A courageous study of the violence and beauty of belonging, this book also celebrates what really endures: the lure of power, the pain of betrayal, the solace of family and home. Vividly imagined and critically acclaimed, this is poetry for now and for years to come.

Table of Contents:
Requiem for an Invasion Fealty Maneaters Gazetteer Opiates: Kaliningrad Concerning Plunder After a 2nd Donation Gattopardo Moff Jerjerrod Redoubles his Efforts Hierophantic Head of Mao, Hunan Province Robespierre faces the Scaffold Portents A Hometown Execution You Might Very Well Think That; I Couldn’t Possibly Comment Pharisees Shrike Amen to Artillery Neck Order Johnson Beharry VC Dances On Ice Awards Night, London/Caina In Clitheroe Keep (1) In Clitheroe Keep (2) Fire and Fleet and Candlelight Septuagesimal Mink The English Sweats Mons Horse Burial Silent Enim Leges Inter Arma Eric Gill between Wisdom and Gaiety Two Seasons for the Tees-Exe Line Near All Hallows That Great Lucifer Star Chamber Parliaments Bonfire Night Operation Gomorrah Ordeal by Fire, By Water Rough Hawkbit Parliament Three Remembrances for Colonel Pride Lion in Winter Running to Field Place Khyber Pass Copy Appropriate Lucifer at Camlann Surveying the Queen’s Pictures Parlement The Crescent of Hearing Recently Sighted Badger Caractacus in the Rape of Bramber Planh Saint Peter ad Vincula (500 years) HMYOI Hymn Those Iscariot Motions Parliament Prussia Cove

About the Author :
James Brookes was born in 1986 and grew up in rural Sussex, a few minutes’ walk from Shelley’s boyhood home of Field Place. He received a major Eric Gregory Award in 2009 and a Hawthornden International Writer’s Fellowship in 2011. He has published a pamphlet, The English Sweats, with Pighog Press and is currently the Williams Librarian at Cranleigh School in Surrey, where also he teaches. Sins of the Leopard is his first full collection.

Review :
In Brookes's hands, "Britain is real again", suddenly lit up by the fierce glint of a scouring intelligence. -- Andrew McCulloch TLS James Brookes writes a wonderfully rich and achieved poetry which reminds me our very best practitioners such as Geoffrey Hill and David Harsent. His profound knowledge of the resources of English history and its protean language does not, however, mean he works with a restricted scope; it is a grounding for his investigation of the world's strange treasurehouse conducted with such a challenging and imaginative musical power it is hard to believe that 'Sins of the Leopard' is his first full collection. -- Ian Duhig James Brookes, a recent Gregory Award winner, gets graphically muscular purchase on the bloody business of English history in his impressive debut ... In Brookes's hands, "Britain is real again", suddenly lit up by the fierce glint of a scouring intelligence, brought grippingly alive in a language that combines Anglo-Saxon clout with Latinate gravitas. This is in every sense a generous book from a generously gifted young poet. -- Andrew McCulloch TLS The weight of each line here, each clause and syllable, is perfectly judged. That phrase 'dirigible angel' is a mark of Brookes' talent - it is at once lyrical, sonically logical and completely surprising. There is a strictness too, strongly evoking the poetry of Geoffrey Hill, as well as a playfulness more reminiscent of Paul Muldoon at his riddling best. -- Tom Chivers Hand + Star Review