Chapter and verse on the bizarre side of today’s poets

Death Comes for the Poets

You don’t have to be a poet to enjoy this black comedy, but it probably helps. It can be read purely as a tightly-plotted detective story, complete with a series of unusually imaginative murders. But the motivating force is a lively satire on the contemporary poetry scene in Britain.

The authors are both distinguished poets, with a thorough mastery of that strange trade. Donegal-born Matthew Sweeney is Writer in Residence at University College, Cork, while London-born John Hartley Williams has published 12 collections of poems, and has lived in Berlin since 1976.