Mischief Night: New & Selected Poems

by Roddy Lumsden

Roddy Lumsden was one of Britain's liveliest and most inventive poets of recent times. From the formal, frenetic debut Yeah Yeah Yeah, through the playful wit and cynicism of The Book of Love, to the ‘magnificent song to himself’ of Roddy Lumsden is Dead, this retrospective of his earlier work shows how his poetic journey was eventful, fuelled by his fascination with the intrigues of men and women and the short steps from real life to folklore to the surreal. Mischief Night brought together the best work from Roddy Lumsden’s three previous collections, as well as a whole new collection, The Drowning Man. It also contains poems from his pamphlet The Bubble Bride and the previously uncollected sonnet sequence Cavoli Riscaldati. It was followed by four later collections. Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.

Genres: Poetry

176 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

Roddy Lumsden was a Scottish poet. He published seven collections of poetry, a number of chapbooks and a collection of trivia, as well as editing a generational anthology of British and Irish poets of the 1990s and 2000s, Identity Parade, among other anthologies.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A snowball's chance in hell was what the guys
At work said. Right enough, she had the pick
Of any man in town. But what the heck,
I thought: faint heart, fair maid and all that jazz.
You've got to try. You never know your luck.
But when I called her up, she wasn't in.
I left a message on her answer-phone:
Black Bo's, I said, tonight at nine o'clock.
I splashed on Gio, creased my 615s
And gelled my hair up in an Elvis lick.
I strolled along the Cowgate and arrived
Bang on, and at the window table, there
She was! And with her, giving me the wink,
The Jewish pope, the constipated bear.

[Tôpher Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern British/Scottish poetry that is original and life affirmingly dour. Like a dirty realist Larkin, he writes about the woefullness of love, sex, drink and the painful inadequacies of life. I look forward to reading more of his exuberantly dismal poetry with something approaching pleasure.