Bodyservant

by Kit Fryatt

"Fryatt is playful, with word-games, variations in line and length and dynamic outbreaks of rhyme giving the poems a kind of performance feel--but they also have a very strong page presence, their complexity in fact demanding movement through them at the pace and with the instant rewind of the eye. The reader is never allowed to get too settled, too comfortable--some fresh piece of invention, some unforeseen swerve, takes us into uneasy places."
--Rupert Loydell, Stride "Experimenting with personas, translations, updates of medieval lyrics, visual accompaniments, dramatic interpretations, and other devices, Fryatt's performances seldom provide a single frame of reference. His multifarious interests and activities as poet, performer, writer, critic, academic, editor, publisher, and much else allow him a range that bestows his work a complex cultural meshwork. Entertainment comes shrouded in mystery and ambivalence, in uncertainties and depreciations, and an intellectual intensity that forms the backbone of his practice."
--Christodoulos Makris, Jacket2

74 pages, Paperback

Published April 27, 2018

About the author

Kit Fryatt was born in 1978 in Tehran, and grew up in Singapore, Turkey and England. He moved to Ireland in 1999, and lectures in English at Dublin City University.

Reviews

[Highlyeccentric · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the first quarter of this book a lot, and then my appreciation tapered off (my appreciation for an Arthurian reference is generous, but can be over-taxed). I found the much longer poems in the latter third were Not My Jam.