tim brenan

Returning Channels are water, words and wires. They flow shaping coasts, cities and people, occasionally for the better. They wash, they drop, they gather and sometimes they just drift.

Landscapes glimpsed include the concrete, the granite and the crumbling. Devon, Gwynedd, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Oswestry ... all combine with stranger sources. The poems could be about getting old, getting bored or just getting there.

Poetry is like any other distillation process. It depends upon the quality of the ingredients, the precision of the still, the maturity of the oaken casks, and the craft of the maker. The outcome can be the deep aroma of an Islay malt or an unpleasant poisoning. I hope Returning Channels is a bit of both.

From philosopher emperors on the train to a little known emperor of the wing, with just a mention of a taxidermy museum, much ground is covered in this book. It is a first collection from a poet specialising in the obscure, the incoherent, and the personal (not to mention the shallow).