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Brian Docherty was born in Glasgow, lived in north London for many years, and now lives in east Sussex, where he is known as the Beach Bard of St. Leonards. In London, he was active in a range of writers groups, including Camden Voices, Vertical Images, Islington Poetry Workshop, and Word For Word Writers Group. He is presently a member of Shorelink Writers, Words For Wellbeing Writers Group, and Hastings Stanza Group. Brian has given readings all over Britain, Paris, New York, San Francisco, and Austin, Texas. He has been a Director of the Austin International Poetry Festival. He is extensively published in magazines and anthologies, and has won prizes in a range of poetry competitions. As he once said in an interview. “If there’s a typical grassroots poet, that’s me.” Brian has been described as ‘a Glasgow-Irish post-Beat poet for the new millennium’, whose work is ‘noted for its blend of politics and social comment spiced with black humour.’
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THE VIEW FROM THE VILLA DELIRIUM by Brian Docherty
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D A Prince reviews The View from the Villa Delirium in London Grip (November 2021):
"... There’s an honesty in Docherty’s writing, a kindness and openness to set against some of the less accessible and inward-looking collections currently being lauded. This is evident, too, when listening to Docherty’s measured reading of his own work. [...] Brian Docherty’s poetry may be familiar from magazines but single poems are only an introduction to what a poet might achieve in a collection.[...] It’s a collection easy to read at a sitting, gently reminding us how much we gain from the wider experience of different art forms as well as from other poets." Katherine Gallagher on 'The view from the Villa Delirium':
"In this, his eighth book, Brian Docherty offers us a feast of poems along a range of subjects, characterized by freshness of vision and detail; multi-faceted poems edged with joys and sadnesses ̶ poems sometimes playful and humorous, but always at home to a humanity aware of the ironies. These are the poems of a traveller, contemporary in tone, and possessing great immediacy, as Docherty’s poetic eye carries all before it, whether the subject is a Ted Hughes’ fox, a Ming vase or landmarks on the south-east coast around Hastings. Martyn Crucefix comments:
"Brian Docherty’s new poems are immensely likable and companionable in their curiosity, attentiveness and love of objects and other people. Again and again, he succeeds in “walk[ing] the town until I know where I am”. This sense of locality – on the south coast of Sussex or the western seaboard of the US – is the solid ground from which, in many startling poems (some visited by mermaids), Docherty pursues his wish to “redefine magic realism”. This fine book celebrates our inhabiting of the world as it is, then thrills us with the pleasures of the imagination." |
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Cheryl Moscowitz comments:
"These are enchanting poems full of mysticism, Buddhism and magic with a political and ecological edge, love poems, poems of longing, paeans to people and elegies to place. In The View From the Villa Delirium Docherty demonstrates his usual worldliness and dexterity in navigating the globe but here is new wonder laid bare in his tribute to Hastings and the seaside rustics that live there providing proof, at least poetically speaking, that mermaids really do exist. Sitting alongside touching personal narrative are ekphrastic poems born out of a direct relationship with a community of artists and their transformational artwork. Docherty is a bit of a wizard himself, conjuring for the reader a true sense of familiarity and closeness — that extra chair always there to ‘raise a glass to absent or scattered friends’." |
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ISBN: 978-1-913329-51-8
2021 Paperback, 21 x 14.4cm, 80 pages RRP£10.00 THIS PAYPAL BUTTON IS FOR UK ORDERS ONLY We regret that if an overseas order is sent to us, we can refund only 90% of the payment made, because there will be a 10% handling charge. |
