Richard Skinner Ordre des livres

A strikingly beautiful collection from poet and writer Richard Skinner. Haunting lyrics of great formal skills, packed with poignancy and elegance. A book to be read, and memorised, that will delight this author's extensive readership.

The narrative follows Ben Baxter as he documents his experiences with intriguing crimes and mysteries, aided by his friends Johnny, Katie, and Chippy. Reinstated as store detectives by the manager eager to showcase crime prevention strategies, they soon encounter unexpected challenges that bring danger and excitement into their lives. This adventure highlights their teamwork and problem-solving skills amidst the unfolding chaos.

Following Viktor Shklovsky's instruction to make everyday objects seem unfamiliar, Richard Skinner's fourth collection sets out to release 'the potential of inanimate objects'. A marbled egg, white balloons, unopened boxes, a Greek island, numbers, a yellow yo-yo - nothing in this book is quite what it seems. Unsettling, precise and enigmatic, Invisible Sun confirms Skinner's reputation as a poet of playful misplacement and misdirection. It is a book about windows, light, clouds, the 'upside down world' glimpsed through shadows and mists, and always the invisible sun - bright source of all life but also our daily measure of time and loss - illuminating 'the distant glitter of other people's lives'.

On his 11th birthday, Ben Baxter receives The Junior Detective Manual, sparking his ambition to become a detective. With his friend Johnny by his side, they embark on a playful adventure to become store detectives, believing it will be an easy task. The story captures their excitement and the challenges they face as they dive into the world of sleuthing, showcasing themes of friendship and the thrill of discovery.

In language that is both precise and strange, Skinner's poems tip certainties on their heads, making familiar objects in the world a mountain is not what it seems, a skull contains a universe. Alongside this process of `making-strange' lies a deep connection with sound, color, temperature, and scent that brings the poems fully to life. These poems engage with form - the cento, the cinquain, the unrhymed sonnet, cut-ups and free verse - in enigmatic, other-worldy ways that constantly surprise and please.

Pulling together his years of experience as a novelist and a teacher, Richard Skinner covers the basics of writing great fiction - narrators, characters, settings - with charm and rigour.

The Busby Babes is a tale of spirit, courage and the eternal bonds of friendship. It is about a group of men whose passion for football led them to unparalleled success and unprecedented glory. But it also cost many of them their lives.

Vade Mecum brings together Richard Skinner’s best essays, reviews and interviews from 1992-2014. There are close critical engagements with writers (Kazuo Ishiguro, Italo Calvino, Shakespeare’s The Tempest) and composers (Erik Satie, Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari), meditations on films and filmmakers (Antonioni, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Chinatown) and idiosyncratic reflections on Werner Herzog’s Of Walking in Ice and Steely Dan.

Two striking, utterly original novellas, tales of art and devotion told with playful elegance.