"A Republic of Linen" is Patrick Brandon's first collection. Whether they tell of rising late and reluctantly from a warm bed, or revisit the deceptive simplicity of childhood, or take us wandering around a cold dissecting lab, these poems are about watching and waiting. With an eye for the detail and tilt of daily life, Brandon guides us from bedroom to studio, through the distorted terrain that lies between what we covet and what we get. Mostly his poems are about love.
Reviews
'Patrick Brandon's poems are strangely confident and confidently strange. They appear to act as a mediation between tension and compassion, between the thrilling unease of real places and the nagging familiarity of invented ones. Quotidian subjects - cameras, canals, campsites - emerge scrambled and refocussed in this energetic and rewarding debut collection' - Roddy Lumsden.
Author description
Patrick Brandon was born in London in 1965. He studied painting at Norwich School of Art, and has exhibited regularly in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. In 2003 he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize. A recipient of a New Writing Ventures bursary in 2006, he won the Essex Poetry Prize in 2005, and received commendations in the Wigtown Poetry Prize 2005. A Republic of Linen (Bloodaxe Books, 2009) is his first book of poems. He lives in London with his partner and two young children.
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