Released 29th June 2011
Another Use of Canvas
In addition to being a wrestler, Angus Sinclair is a photo-artist and a graduate of the Norwich College of Arts. He is currently studying for an MA in poetry at the University of East Anglia. Another Use of Canvas is his first major publication.
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The dusty, melancholy, savage, masque of professional wrestling is the subject here. The writer is himself a wrestler, but unlike most wrestlers, he is also a poet: a unique thing then, the wrestler-poet, furthermore and English wrestler-poet, writing about the body and about England in terms of wrestling, focusing on the ordinary inside the glamorous, the bruise inside the myth. The poems are elegant tributes to that part of the imagination where justice and retribution play themselves out on the skin. Muscle memory is folk memory here, a full, strange-yet-familiar, compelling world.
It’s been heartening to witness the rise of a new kind of poetry pamphlet in recent years, one which, rather than simply showcasing a poet’s ability, constitutes an entire, fully-realised micro-collection, where the shorter page count acts as concentrating lens, focusing the poet’s powers on a specific strategy. Angus Sinclair’s debut consists exclusively of poems about professional wrestling. His skills as a poet are already well-developed and it’s apparent from early on in the collection that capturing crisp, emotionally resonant details with the sting of authenticity isn’t much of a problem for him. As well as the ring, poems take place before and after bouts, documenting the preparation and aftermath.
Read more of this review at Hand + Star.
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