Agard - The Coming of the Little Green Man

John Agard has been broadening the canvas of British poetry for the past 40 years with his mischievous, satirical fables which overturn all our expectations. In his eighth Bloodaxe collection we enter a world of play and parable in which the little green man stands for all pesky outsiders in provocative poems charged with contemporary resonance. Which box should the little green man tick on the question of identity? Will the little green man survive as a minority of one in a multiracial London? What if the little green man volunteers to give blood to 21st-century humankind? Winner of the Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, he brings to bear his trademark trickster wit that bridges the metaphysical and the political, the comic and the poignant, the oral and the literary. His Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (2009) was followed by Travel Light Travel Dark (2013) and Playing the Ghost of Maimonides (2016). If Agard had not already been forged in the roller-coaster aftermath of empire, there would be an urgent need for society to invent someone like him. WILLIAM WALLIS , Financial Times A complex, adult text that grapples with sectarian extremism, the Torah and Koran, humankinds perpetual tribal Iliad But it is also an attempt to recalibrate spiritual poetry to contain our new reality.

CLARE POLLARD , The Poetry Review on Playing the Ghost of Maimonides Cover artwork: Satoshi Kitamura For those bibulous moments with friends who shared
the little Green Mans evolution. Mark Hewitt for his as ever conspiratorial thoughts; William Wallis for engaging mobile-wise with
the little Green Mans odyssey among vegetables; Jacob Ross for time spent journeying with
the little green arrival on a St Lucian veranda; and for my poet-wife, Grace Nichols,
for casting her much-valued eye.

On our epic journey from nothing to nowhere we leave behind a trail of garments. CEES NOOTEBOOM

Wishing you were here beside the Thames where bridges arch their illuminated torsos into a metallic impression of limbo, and sirens wail from a Babel of wheels that would challenge even Orpheus lyre.

Yet parables in the wind are there for free, if youd dare to look beyond those spires aiming for the heavens bulls-eye-blue as if salvation grew from clouds when roots are also disguised gods.