Read my review of Lee Harwood's The Orchid Boat on Stride here. Here are his hands reading:
And here and here are parts one and two of a review of his Collected Poems. Perhaps best read before the Stride review. See Enitharmon's announcement of, and extract from, my review here. And, oddly, the review again, here.
I had a strange thought working on Lee Harwood's work: during the time I write about him, I kind of feel that I am in communication with the man himself. I mean this literally. In periods of work I don't feel the necessity to phone him or write to him, and it's a surprise to find that I haven't, because I feel it's already happening. Perhaps it's a personal by-product of an effect William Rowe describes in his Three Lyric Poets: 'When Harwood explores intimacies of feeling almost too delicate for the voice to sustain, he deploys the hesitancies and gaps of everyday speech, the places where meaning breaks down into the sheer lapse of lived time.’ (Rowe 2009: 7)
