Matthew Sweeney & John Hartley Williams

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Poets Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams will read from their novel
"DEATH COMES FOR THE POETS"

This very black comedy, reveals a different scenario of contemporary poetry. It skirmishes in the poetry wars, vicious rivalries, envy and literary corruption, culminating in a series of terrifying murders.

The average reader of novels, if bothering to think about the subject at all, might well imagine the world of contemporary poetry in the United Kingdom and Ireland to be a place of quiet, bookish people, preoccupied with delicate epiphanies and quiet lyrical effusions. Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams, in this very black comedy, reveal a different scenario - skirmishes in the poetry wars, vicious rivalries, envy and literary corruption, culminating in murder. Not just one murder, but a breathtaking series of murders in which the laureates of the land are assassinated one by one.

Fergus Diver, celebrated auteur and restaurant critic, encounters more than mere bad hygiene in an Indian restauirant in Maidstone. Barnaby Brown, charismatic Irish bard, makes an ill-timed pass at an elegant blonde obituarist on a ferry bound for Rosslare. The fabled Scottish Dichter Alexander Duthie, walking on his island retreat, looks up in horror to see a black helicopter bearing down on him. Victor Priest, the internationally famed art detective, who is himself pursuing a cache of lost manuscripts by Franz Kafka, is asked to investigate.

Who or what is behind these mysteries? The entire literary world is in uproar.  And what about the comic book hero Bard Slayer? Why do graffiti pictures of a caped aerialist come to be sprayed on to walls everywhere? A young Londoner called Joe Biggs and his Glaswegian girl friend Naily Dunbar, both oblivious to the world of poetry until they are drawn into these events, stumble on the answer to the riddle and a desperate confrontation takes place in a moonlit bay along the southern coast of England

Matthew Sweeney has published nine collections of poetry, two of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, and one for the Forward Prize. A Selected Poems came out from Cape in 2002. His most recent collection was Black Moon (Cape, 2007), and a new collection, Horse Music, is forthcoming from Bloodaxe early in 2013.

A reader-friendly guide to the writing of poetry called Teach Yourself Poetry, also co-written with John Hartley Williams, is now available in a third (updated) edition from Hodder.

John Hartley Williams has published twelve collections of poetry, two of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. His most recent publications are: Assault on the Clouds, Shoestring Press, 2012; Less of That W Or I'll Z You! Surrealist Editions (Leeds), 2011; Hex Wheels, Hans van Ejk at the Bonnefant Press, Holland, 2011; A Poetry Inferno, Shoestring Press, 2011; Café des Artistes. Jonathan Cape, 2009.

In 2010 he published a collection of Berlin poems to mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall: Outpost Theatre. (The Bonnefant Press, Holland).

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