The Infernal Garden

'Gregory Leadbetter’s The Infernal Garden - in which the natural world is both revealed and cultivated by a poet of exceptional complexity and clarity - is its own dawn chorus, a multitude of voices, note perfect, brimming and melodious. But sung so gently. Almost hushed. This collection is a masterclass in harmony and pitch.'

-- Jim Crace

‘Above the lulling cadences of Leadbetter’s perfect musical ear rises a gothic and prescient vocabulary that sings and also singes. A child is pulled from a flower bed and a plant is torn at its root. A creepy raven is ‘almost human’, while an English summer bodes ‘Saharan dust’, ‘skeleton ash’, ‘dessicated milt’ and ‘strangling thirst.’ These are songs of grief and rupture -- but also of excavation and transcendence. The ‘word’ forges a connection with the 'weird’ (i.e. the ghostly) through Leadbetter’s gifts as a listener and as a master of phrasing, in poems that release an astonishing force of transformative imagination.’

-- Kathryn Maris

‘This is a profoundly-felt but also profoundly-thought collection, which honours, on every page, its commitment to re-enchanting everyday life. Leadbetter knows that enchantment comes with risks, and these poems do not shy away from the darkness. While Leadbetter's poems are tuned into something magical and sometimes occult, their mysteries are carried into the light by his deep understanding of craft, his formal range, and his respect for the traditions in which he works. These poems are not accounts of experience; they summon experience itself.’

-- Patrick McGuin