Yellow Studio

Yellow Studio, Stephen Romer's fourth collection of poems, returns to the erotic intensities of Tribute (1998), counterpointed by the rueful satire that comes with age and a disbelief at having reached 'mid-life'. In this many-angled book the poet continues to meditate on home and exile, and on home-in-exile - the trauma of removal and the unsought joys of re-settlement. At its heart is the yellow studio, the perennial, private place of art and its creation, linked here to childhood memory. The book's final section is made up of poems to the poet's father, a sequence whose austerity and restraint are the means towards the encounter.

Cover painting The Yellow Studio by Caroline Romer (detail). Cover design by www.StephenRaw.com.