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In Arcimboldo's famous seventeenth-century Mannerist portraits, the sitter's face is composed of organic matter. In subordinating a mixture of elements into an unrelated whole, imagination can transform the medium of expression itself. Tim Liardet's Arcimboldo's Bulldog: New and Selected Poems spans nine of his eleven collections award-winning collections and adds new poems, fresh produce, reconfiguring his life's work to date ...The book draws on his two T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted collections The Blood Choir (2006) and The World Before Snow (2015). Vivid images, large abstractions, symbols, allegory, elegy, provocation, confession, and lyric find a necessary place in his work. Arcimboldo's Bulldog records achievement and includes a promissory note towards his next collection.
Tim Liardet’s poetry is a concentration of intelligence, fierce but
accurate feeling and an encompassing imagination…His images surprise and
startle but always engage. Arcimboldo’s Bulldog, his New and
Selected Poems, is the work of an exemplary poet at the top of his
craft.
I think Tim Liardet is one of the most accomplished poets now writing in English in the UK. Indisputably, he is a poet of scrupulous standards. He is blessed with profound ambition, which singles him out from his peers. | Robert Minhinnick, New Welsh Review
Poignant, deeply intelligent poems. From “the gongs of lily pads” to “Self Portrait with Patio Flames”, their beguiling language matches the originality of their approach to both the surfaces of world and the depths of family relationships. | Ruth Padel, on The Storm House
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