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Birthmarks
Birthmarks is Imlah's first collection of poems. Many are extended narratives whose themes are class, pretension, sexual self-deception and daily betrayals. The narrators include an aspiring Cockney, a deranged zoologist, a feckless racist and an unlucky foetus.
- GenresPoetry
56 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
6 people want to read
About the author
Mick Imlah
13 books4 followersMichael Ogilvie Imlah, better known as Mick Imlah, was a Scottish poet and editor.
Imlah was brought up in Milngavie near Glasgow, before moving to Beckenham, Kent in 1966. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he subsequently taught as a Junior Fellow. He was editor of Poetry Review from 1983-6, and worked at the Times Literary Supplement from 1992.
His collection The Lost Leader (2008) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and was shortlisted for the 2009 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
Imlah died in January 2009 aged 52 as a result of motor neurone disease. He was diagnosed with this disease in December of 2007.
Imlah was brought up in Milngavie near Glasgow, before moving to Beckenham, Kent in 1966. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he subsequently taught as a Junior Fellow. He was editor of Poetry Review from 1983-6, and worked at the Times Literary Supplement from 1992.
His collection The Lost Leader (2008) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and was shortlisted for the 2009 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
Imlah died in January 2009 aged 52 as a result of motor neurone disease. He was diagnosed with this disease in December of 2007.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 4, 2016
In this rambling, noisy, rambunctious early book, Mick Imlah starts out with something apparently influenced by Edith Sitwell's 'Facade'.
He carries on in a voice more his own with long lines, poems about various incidents such as returning to his unlocked student room in Oxford at midnight and having to evict a tramp from his bed, and an (imaginary) journey to a centuries-old saint in the desert of some Arab country.
And he ends with 'The Zoologist's Bath', in which an eccentric Victorian scientist convinces himself of the reality of all creatures naturally re-evolving towards an aquatic state - all creatures including himself in his bathtub.
Imlah's masterful command of rhyme and rhythm was out of step with all except the best poets of the 1980s, and this, together with his colourful and bizarre imagery and his offbeat subject matter, established him in his early 30s as a leader among up-and-coming poets. He only produced one more collection of poetry, 'The Lost Leader', before his death in his early 50s.
He carries on in a voice more his own with long lines, poems about various incidents such as returning to his unlocked student room in Oxford at midnight and having to evict a tramp from his bed, and an (imaginary) journey to a centuries-old saint in the desert of some Arab country.
And he ends with 'The Zoologist's Bath', in which an eccentric Victorian scientist convinces himself of the reality of all creatures naturally re-evolving towards an aquatic state - all creatures including himself in his bathtub.
Imlah's masterful command of rhyme and rhythm was out of step with all except the best poets of the 1980s, and this, together with his colourful and bizarre imagery and his offbeat subject matter, established him in his early 30s as a leader among up-and-coming poets. He only produced one more collection of poetry, 'The Lost Leader', before his death in his early 50s.
Displaying 1 of 1 review