About the Author

Jeremy Reed was born in Jersey, Channel Islands, and read for his PhD at the University of Essex. He is widely acknowledged as the most imaginatively gifted British poet of his generation, praised by Seamus Heaney for his 'rich and careful writing' and by David Lodge for his 'remarkable lyric gift'. His Selected Poems were published by Penguin in 1987. Subsequent collections have been Nineties (Cape 1990), Dicing for Pearls (1990), Pop Stars (1994), Sweet Sister Lyric (1996), Saint Billie (2001) and Duck and Sally Inside (2004), all from Enitharmon Press. He has also published Heartbreak Hotel (Orion 2002), a verse biography of Elvis Presley. Reed has received a major Gregory Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, as well as the Poetry Society's Translation Award for his translations of Montale (Bloodaxe, 1991). He has also produced distinctive translations of Novalis and Jean Cocteau. As a novelist and essayist, Reed's books include the novels Dorian, Red Hot Lipstick and Boy Caesar, and literary essays entitled Madness: The Price of Poetry (Peter Owen, 1989). He has also written Delirium: An Interpretation of Arthur Rimbaud and studies of the musicians Marc Almond, Brian Jones and Scott Walker. Jeremy Reed lives and works in London. He is a full-time writer.

Reviews

"An elegant stylist whose devotion to excess carries the reader along as he stunningly evokes life on the edge."

"Brilliant in its employment of history and its understanding of historical research."