THE banquet
CARCANET PRESS, 2025
**
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN HEANEY PRIZE 2025
BEST NEW POETRY: FINANCIAL TIMES
BOOK PREVIEW
“Memory and Geography” in The New Yorker
“Un Amour Désespéré” in The Friday Poem
After Rimbaud’s Illuminations
“The Citadel of the Mind” in PN Review
After Dante’s Convivio
INTRODUCTION TO THE BANQUET
Language and Longing: Carcanet Press blog
LE MALHEUR A ÉTÉ MON DIEU
Conversation with Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell
THE BANQUET explores the fragile, intricate links between language and longing - how words can reconstruct great cities out of memories and dreams, tear them apart, or carry them from one place to another, as if each city, house and chamber were made of sonic and visual images rather than walls and bricks. Moving between the worlds of philosophy, theatre and poetry - from Dante's Florence to Wittgenstein's Cambridge; from Tom Stoppard's theatre stage to the harsh landscapes of Rimbaud's poetry - The Banquet explores the ever-growing tensions between words and action, knowledge and ethics.