A HARVARD scholar has praised the latest collection of poetry published by a Stourbridge born author and university professor.

Gregory Leadbetter, a professor of poetry at Birmingham City University, has published widely on romantic poetry and thought, 20th century and contemporary poetry, and has written poetry and radio drama for the BBC.

His book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination won the University English Book Prize 2012 and in 2016 he published his first full collection of poems, The Fetch, some of which were later set to music by composer and pianist Eric McElroy.

Now a second collection with Nine Arches Press, entitled Maskwork, has been published to much acclaim.

Professor Leadbetter's poems have been described as "lushly experimental" by Harvard University scholar Vidyan Ravinthiran who said: "He takes poetry seriously as a form of thought. To read him is to discover a cure for false realisms, and to be reminded that language can make sense, and remake it, in unexpected ways.”

English writer and novelist Jim Crace describes the new collection as "a masterclass in artistry and gracefulness" and he added: "It is both tender and ecstatic, secretive and plentiful, dainty and robust, and its melodic, undulating voice will pin you to the page.”

While British horticulturist and journalist Alys Fowler said: "These poems feel, at once, both very old and startlingly new. Lying somewhere between the two something disquieting is often revealed about how we make sense of the world around us, the natural and the human made."

Prof Leadbetter, aged 46, who grew up in Norton and now lives in Worcestershire, describes the book "as a kind of dream theatre" - and says: "Each poem is also a book...a dream theatre in itself."

One of the poems from the book, Gramarye, was shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2020 and two others Cara and Archaeopteryx were shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize 2020 - two of the world's major English-language poetry prizes.

A film has also been made of another poem - Metaphysician - and can be seen on the Nine Arches YouTube channel.

The poems draw on moods and experiences, Prof Leadbetter says, adding: "There are poems of place and ecology that respond to places I haunt and that haunt me. There are also poems on music, science technology, archaeology and our relationship to the deep time within and beyond ourselves and our habitat."

Maskwork, priced £9.99, is available from Nine Arches Press and Amazon.

Archaeopteryx

Not the folded bone and feather, but the word

had taken hold: a fossil angel

echo splitting open that first syllable,

the optics exposed in the sound I heard:

 

before I knew, something spoken now stirred

a tongue in stone, elastic and audible,

my English cleaving to its alien kernel

at work in the absence of the first bird.

 

I remember this, and the story you told:

a visit to the Natural History Museum,

the reptile wing as living as dead,

 

my language as young as its grain was old:

you, wondering at your infant son,

the attendant, startled at what I said.