REVIEW

Anonymous Intruder by Ian Seed. Pub. Shearsman Books, 80pp, £8.95 / $15. ISBN 978-1-84861-028-6

Ian Seed has lived on mainland Europe and worked as a translator, and the effect of European poetry is apparent in his work, quite apart from the acknowledged debt to Pierre Reverdy. Disembodied voices and unanchored narratives float through this evenly-paced and quiet verse, in which there's a hint of surrealism; glimpses of rooms, landscapes, and people are woven in and out of the poems. The theme of the first section, 'Rearrangements', is exile and separation, invoked through suggestion and atmosphere. Seed writes open poetry that avoids neat summings-up and obvious statement; but while there's instability and shifting perspectives, there's none of the disjunction of a poet like Robert Sheppard, more of a measured calm....

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