Paperback, 92 pages, £9.99,
ISBN 9780953445615,
Oyster Press, PO Box 395, Brighton BN50 9GJ
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All books are 1st editions signed by the author.
This Side Up
He realized this old image of his had been appropriated after
a slight wobble on impact to hold the others up. This kept most
of them right on message until they’d all freshened up their look
for summer, bang on trend with great tomboy styling. He scared
the others up with an arse-over-teakettle whoop-de-do which left
the crux of the matter quivering right there to be expanded.
They drew it towards them on wires until the youngest
of them, wearing surgical gloves for her date with the duke,
smiled gently at the tiny figures imprisoned in the centre
of a translucent sphere while they floated up and disappeared
in the horizon of coloured alphabets.
The world has been turned upside down.
Accordingly, any semblance of traditional logical narrative is constantly disrupted in Brian Fogarty’s new collection of poems by lines and images which appear like irrational fugitives from parallel worlds, and whilst taking us on a dreamlike and often disturbing and disorientating journey, he returns us to our everyday lives refreshed, with a heightened sense of expectation and wonder at possibilities that are by turns playful, joyful, poignant, nostalgic, enigmatic, thrilling, challenging, and menacing.
In all Brian Fogarty’s work, whether his novels, short stories, paintings, or poems – including ‘This Side Up’, his dazzling and provocative new collection, – art is not an arena for the illustration, mere imitation, or logging of apparent reality, but an autonomous, artificial act driven by his innermost, instinctive and unique need to give shape to a profound elemental force of expression.