Exurbia
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Exurbia, the title of Andy Brown’s eighth collection of poetry, is the name of the urban fringe at the outer limits of suburbia. These poems begin here, characterised by edges, transition and change. In the assured lyric voice for which Andy Brown’s poetry has become well known, they pay meticulous attention to where and how we make our homes. The poems of the book’s central sequence are elegiac versions inspired by the Argentinian poet Borges, gazing over the city’s blurred outskirts at dawn and sundown, while the book’s final poems reach fully ex urbia, arriving at woodlands and moors, rivers and estuaries. Here, from the edge of the shoreline, they head out to sea before making a circular migration back home.
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Exurbia, the title of Andy Brown’s eighth collection of poetry, is the name of the urban fringe at the outer limits of suburbia. These poems begin here, characterised by edges, transition and change. In the assured lyric voice for which Andy Brown’s poetry has become well known, they pay meticulous attention to where and how we make our homes. The poems of the book’s central sequence are elegiac versions inspired by the Argentinian poet Borges, gazing over the city’s blurred outskirts at dawn and sundown, while the book’s final poems reach fully ex urbia, arriving at woodlands and moors, rivers and estuaries. Here, from the edge of the shoreline, they head out to sea before making a circular migration back home.
Self Portrait at the Year’s Turning
The morning light slips through the louvered slats.
You tug your mind from bed and start the day
with washing, toast and coffee, then switch on
much later with the radio, as though your life
were taking place elsewhere – the everyday
desire to see yourself as someone else:
the bright, imagined self behind your dreams;
the other you, the one that lives inside
the space between which one of you is ‘you’
and those that are just possibilities. For when
it comes to being, don’t we all do it
with some success, as we begin to learn
ourselves, balancing with grace like acrobats
turned out in the disguise each year creates?
Published: 01 July 2014
ISBN: 978 1 905208 24 1
Pages: 84
“A contemporary goliard with an emotional range. The aural landscape that Brown creates is remarkable.”
James Sutherland-Smith
“A love of language and willingness to play with music, meaning and the reader’s expectations and perceptions.”
Poetry Review
“An exceptional collection of poems, clever and beautiful, that exhibits mastery of diverse forms.”
Stride Magazine
“One of our most interesting and exciting younger poets.”
John Burnside
Andy Brown’s most recent book of poems is Bloodlines (Worple Press 2018). His previous Worple Press collections are Exurbia (2014) and a collaboration with David Morley, Of Science. Previous books include The Fool and the Physician, Goose Music (with John Burnside), and Fall of the Rebel Angels (all Salt). A selection of his poems appears in the Bloodaxe anthology Identity Parade. He recently edited The Writing Occurs As Song: A Kelvin Corcoran Reader (Shearsman 2014) and co-edited the major anthology, A Body of Work: Poetry and Medical Writing, with Corinna Wagner (Bloomsbury 2015). He is Professor of Creative Writing at Exeter University and was formerly an Arvon Foundation Centre Director.
