Masterpieces

"How the ruins of me adore the ruins of you". Here are 24 Masterpieces collected for the first time. The title of this book of incredibly wide-ranging poems is not as arrogant as it seems. A masterpiece was originally the work submitted by a journeyman craftsman to qualify as a master, and Hannaway is nothing if not a craftsman of verse. The poet is also an actor, once reviewed as "just as hilarious as anything you would see at the Royal Shakespeare Company" - and the cast of...
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"How the ruins of me adore the ruins of you". Here are 24 Masterpieces collected for the first time. The title of this book of incredibly wide-ranging poems is not as arrogant as it seems. A masterpiece was originally the work submitted by a journeyman craftsman to qualify as a master, and Hannaway is nothing if not a craftsman of verse. The poet is also an actor, once reviewed as "just as hilarious as anything you would see at the Royal Shakespeare Company" - and the cast of characters here is a clue to this. Here comes Lot's wife, arguing with her husband that she has a perfect right to look back at the city of Sodom if she wants to; an insomniac stallholder in a pre-dawn market of one, the tribal ritual in every Main Street ear-piercing shop; people in the desert desperately hauling giant statues of themselves; Daedalus getting his idea for making wings from a suicide jumping from a bridge; a father listening to his daughter's music practice and travelling through the sounds to his own less-civilised childhood; Soviet youths addicted to jazz records printed on old X-rays, and Daniel colluding with the lion not to stick to the script. Hannaway has a respectful disrespect for tradition - villanelle, ballad form, free verse, the lot. His mind is a gallimaufry in a pantechnicon, and that's just how he likes it. Warning: this book has not been tamed; it comes from a mind and a heart, not from a campus writing course. Approach at your own risk.