FLYING FISHCarcanet OxfordPoets
ISBN: 1903039568
Paperback - 64 pages (29 March, 2002)
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Antony Dunn's second collection of poems glimpses 'the otherlife' of things caught out of their own element. From the flying fish of the title poem to a prehistoric monster discovered on a market stall; from a budgerigar-fancier's mysterious accident to a goldfish collector's obsession; from Barbados to the end of Cleethorpes pier, this book is filled with characters and creatures who, for one strange moment, become more gloriously - or more horribly - themselves than ever before.
The poems in Flying Fish wrestle with our pre-occupations - our fascination with the sea, our helplessness in the face of love and loss, our fear of age and all that lies beyond - testing our borders and boundaries for places we can call home.
From reviews of Flying Fish:
"Dunn's considerable talent... rewards the reader with epiphanies, annunciations of light, poems refreshingly affirmative"
Dannie Abse
"an alert, intelligent book... poems which, Brodsky-like, take the reader somewhere new, jinking round the corners of places we think we know into imagined elsewheres... there's much to admire"
Poetry Wales
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PILOTS AND NAVIGATORSOxford Poets
ISBN: 0192880950
Paperback - 64 pages (1 September, 1999)
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"Dunn, also an actor, was the last new poet published by Oxford University Press before their commercial decision to axe contemporary poetry altogether.
"Thankfully, Carcanet have picked up this collection, a confident and stylish book by so young a writer (Dunn is not yet thirty). Formally, one could not find fault in these polished stanzas, and Dunn displays an instinctive sense of line and subtlety of rhythm. The title conjures up expectations of a different book, but travel features often, whether touring with actors, ferry trips to Brugge or Dublin, cars in driving rain, or an ancestor's (perhaps apocryphal) voyage to England with his own 'secret Scyllas and Sirens / with which to contend'.
"The touring actors appear in various poems, but in 'Bournemouth' Dunn looks beyond the artifice to 'the unreeled sand where its own, its true story / is played out quietly by a cast of dumb extras'. The real territory of this book is youth and uncertainty: in the poem 'Halloween' he counteracts the group of friends' efforts to terrify each other with the underlying fear, 'We are most afraid of the future's ghosts - / of being helpless. Of the moon turning / its profile, of the fruit going to seed.' Friendships, adventure and fledging relationships are set against questions of identity and delight in experience. Dunn's stance is observational and his voice has a trace of English reserve, resulting in a tone of detachment that is at once enabling and limiting. Pilots and Navigators is an accomplished debut from a poet we're sure to hear more from."
Bloomsbury Magazine
From reviews of Pilots and Navigators:
"An often unique voice... subtle, thought-provoking and enormously readable"
Poetry Review
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