afterlove — Mario Petrucci
ISBN: 9781788640954
£9.99
When it comes to those we love, even our most yearned-for states of union are subject to change. afterlove endures the swarming devastations of loss as consummately as it enters love’s raptures, ever alive to devotion’s flow and ebb. From domestic paean centred on the beloved, through a father’s unabashed affection for his children, to the sometimes savage realisations of love’s dissolution, these poems succeed in spanning relationship heaven and hell. Mario Petrucci generates love (and non-love) poetry that refuses to squint in the glare of experience. With characteristic candour and inventiveness, whether through light-filled lyric or a murderous remaking of myth, Petrucci takes us just about everywhere love can go.
afterlove is a collection marked by emotional openness and imaginative risk. These poems of family connection and disconnection are probing, and those featuring the poet’s relationship to his children are particularly striking in their tenderness and honesty.
Moniza Alvi
Hear Mario talk about his work on the Planet Poetry podcast. And read a review of afterlove on the Gwales website.
Author biography
Mario Petrucci is a metaphysical poet of international standing, an ecologist and PhD physicist. He is the only poet to have been resident at the Imperial War Museum and with BBC Radio 3, and has received major literary prizes across the board. His collections include Heavy Water (2004), Flowers of Sulphur (2007), i tulips (2010) and the waltz in my blood (2011). As a creative tutor, he has worked with the Poetry School, the Poetry Society the Imperial War Museum and The Royal Society. His remarkable poetry soundscape ‘Tales from the Bridge’ was a centrepiece of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes Award for New Poetry. Mario lives in north London.