Corpus

Corpus - Michael Symmons Roberts' fourth collection - centres around the body. Mystical, philosophical and erotic, the bodies in these poems move between different worlds - life and after-life, death and resurrection - encountering pathologists' blades, geneticists' maps and the wounds of love and war.
Equally at case with scripture (Jacob wrestling the Angel in 'Choreography') and science ('Mapping the Genome'), these poems are a blend of modern and ancient wisdom, a profound and lyrical exploration of the mysteries of the body.
Ranging effortlessly between the physical extremes of death - from putrefaction to purification - and life - drought and flood, hunger and satiation- the poems in Corpus speak of 'living the half-life between two elements', of what it is to be unique and luminously alive.

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