Bobby Parker - Blue Movie
A Debut New Poets series collection form Nine Arches Press.
Bobby Parker’s poems play truth or dare, baring the soul of the small town blues: undaunted by subject matter and fearless of propriety or prettiness, he writes with dynamic clarity of frightening, lonely places within and without our selves.
In this debut full collection, Parker holds back on nothing – both daringly up-front and utterly candid, Blue Movie veers between disaster, horror, comedy, sex, drugs, love and parenthood with dare-you-to-laugh brilliance. Along with their starkness and mucky-faced honesty, these poems are meticulously crafted, canny, and always one step ahead.
Praise for Bobby Parker's Blue Movie:
'When you've been awake all night, and the sun comes up, and you're deafened by the sound of your own slowing heartbeat, your body now left to the wasteland of noradrenaline and the sheer terror of being alive, you might fall apart. Or like Bobby Parker has done with this beautiful collection, breathe through it as though it's one long exhalation of the lived experience. This is what is revealed here on paper; the thrill of higher-than-highs and the destitute howl of the lows, as friend, husband, lover, parent, user, son, and magically gifted writer. Here is generosity. Here is Love.' - Melissa Lee-Houghton
'The most surprising thing about these poems, considering their bleakness, is the lasting sense of excitement and hope: defeated many times over, these are poems still besotted with language and life, and they present a fresh challenge (and genuine cause for alarm) to the cosy refinements and polite distinctions of the vast majority of contemporary British poetry. They rub the shit of real life into literature’s carpet. They dare you to think they’re kidding. They are never the first to blink, or to turn out the light.' - Sam Riviere