A Full-On Basso Profundo
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Salt Publishing
Published:3rd Feb '25
Should be back in stock very soon
Ken Evans’s collection is structured in three inter-locking and overlapping sequences: Family; Masculinity; and America. Subjects range from the personal sacrifice and meaning of an organ donation; the loss of a child in still-birth; the death of a friend through drink, as well as bigger themes of our constant wars and forebodings of climate collapse. But these poems also experience hope, humour and optimism shining through – and often co-existing with the darker themes, thus poems on the small vagaries and mishaps of our digital lives, of the money-anxieties of car maintenance, or of negotiating airport security with a replacement hip.
Ken Evans has divided this ambitious and searching collection into three overlapping sections. The Oikosphere – from oikos – family, household (Greek); The Anersphere – from aner – male (Greek); and Americanicity, a pleasing word I’d not heard before, noted as ‘an uncommon noun’ …A Full-On Basso Profundo is a deeply-felt collection for right now. Ken Evans challenges, with craft and musicality, the state we’re in. A necessary book.
-- Jean Atkin * London Grip *Evans brings curiosity, wit and energy to his work. He’s observant, and translates his observations into neat imagery … He’s alert to contemporary issues of war, climate change and gender politics, but also playful with language – witness what he does with rhyme and half-rhyme in Real Diamond Lederhosen, where skin is described as a “body glove we shine in […] no stein or red wine can stain.” And beneath all this humour and play, A Full-On Basso Profundo displays real compassion for human vulnerability, and even offers us a sort of prescription for survival.
-- Hilary Menos * The Friday PoISBN: 9781784633356
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 7mm
Weight: unknown
96 pages