Corpus
- Michael Symmons Roberts' Whitbread-Prize winning fourth collection
- centres around the body. Mystical, philosophical & erotic, the bodies in these poems move between different worlds
- life & after-life, death & resurrection
- encountering pathologists' blades, geneticists' maps & the wounds of love & war.
Equally at ease with scripture (Jacob wrestling the Angel in ' Choreography') & science (' Mapping the Genome'), these poems are a thrilling blend of modern & ancient wisdom, a profound & lyrical exploration of the mysteries of the body:' So the martyrs took the lamb./ It tasted rich, steeped in essence/ Of anchovy. They picked it clean/ & found within, a goose, its pink/ Beak in the lamb's mouth like a tongue.' Ranging effortlessly between the physical extremes of death
- from putrefaction to purification
- & life
- drought & flood, hunger & satiation
- the poems in Corpus speak most movingly of 'living the half-life between two elements', of what it is to be unique & luminously alive.