Emporium

Pindar's writing gestures towards a public language . . . though this is regularly undermined by the comic and sardonic . . . The poetry thrives on this flexibility of tone, its declarations constantly being shifted, contested and contradicted . . . Much of the book is made up of elusive, uneasy parables. . . that hover between pessimism and hope, and the potential of language to articulate this predicament. - the Guardian

It was about time for somebody to be channelling Eliot, maybe Stevens, Laforgue, and the Metaphysicals to such clashing effect: 'bright as a seedsman's packet', with unexpected timbres and sonorities sabotaged by glockenspiel accents. Pindar is just right for the job - John Ashbery

In this sparkling début collection Ian Pindar brilliantly fulfils Verlaine's injunction to the poet to take eloquence and wring its neck. Emporium offers the reader a beguiling and compendious range of styles and voices, and signals the arrival of a fascinating and original poet - Mark Ford