Of Love, Death and the Sea-Squirt

In Chris Greenhalgh's delightful yet disturbing second book, we encounter a cannibalistic wife, a man trapped in a valley of women, a conjuror who spirits himself away, and a kinky mortician. There are poems on themes of love and death, while Coco and Igor celebrates the love affair between Chanel and Stravinsky. The emblem of the sea-squirt haunts the collection: a creature which, having fulfilled its life's task of finding a rock to cling onto and make its home, proceeds...
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In Chris Greenhalgh's delightful yet disturbing second book, we encounter a cannibalistic wife, a man trapped in a valley of women, a conjuror who spirits himself away, and a kinky mortician. There are poems on themes of love and death, while Coco and Igor celebrates the love affair between Chanel and Stravinsky. The emblem of the sea-squirt haunts the collection: a creature which, having fulfilled its life's task of finding a rock to cling onto and make its home, proceeds in an act of appalling self-slaughter to eat its own brain. The vivid imagery and narrative excitement which characterised his first book, Stealing the Mona Lisa, feature strongly again in poems which sparkle with irreverent comedy and fierce satire. Alongside the playfulness and linguistic glitter, however, this second collection is distinguished by a genuine emotional delicacy. Artfully combining passion and scepticism, the poems explore the darkening spaces of public and private worlds in a language at once sophisticated, sensual and alive.