Taken for pearls

Taken for Pearls is the vibrant and various new collection of poems by Tony Curtis. Included are beautiful elegies for relatives and colleagues, as well as fascinating persona poems where characters from history reveal themselves to the reader. Also featured are fine occasional lyrics inspired by domestic incidents, as well as a series of love poems translated from the dialect of the Iraqi Marsh Arabs. Throughout, the clarity and precision of the author's style allows his subjects to shine through.

Poems that meditate on the darker moments of history, such as the 1993 Dylan Thomas Prize-winner 'Incident on a Hospital Train from Calcutta, 1944' are counterbalanced by the humour of 'The Captain's Diary' a long poem in the voice of an Edwardian golf club captain.