The Well in the Rain

"The Well in the Rain", Tony Curtis's second book from Arc, brings together work from his six previous books. Bicycles, famine, ghosts, grannies, Tibetan Buddhists, Beckettian sighs and Lucian Freud's nudes are all revealed with a rare, and loving, simplicity. His award-winning poetry has always been characterized by its compassion and humour: full of gods but empty of forgiveness. In a closing selection of new poems, gathered here as "Tossing the Feathers", Curtis's wit and heartache surface in a long poem "The Well in the Rain", that faces the loss of his father. This is life-giving, life-affirming poetry, full of loss, love and longing.