Self-Portrait with the Happiness

Part self-portrait, part love affair, the poems in Self-Portrait with The Happiness are obsessed with moments elsewhere. Rural England contends with immense Chinese cities via Thailand and Japan. The effect is a collection which craves the exotic in the everyday: puppeteers communicating through their puppets, sonnets sketched on the snowy rooftops of cars and Chinese dragons flying above the Lakeland fells. David Tait is one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary poetry, and this eagerly-awaited collection confirms the promise of his pamphlet, Love's Loose Ends, which won the Poetry Business Competition, judged by Simon Armitage.