Neil Gregory reviews Misadventure By Richard Meier Misadventure introduces Richard Meier as a voice so familiar you could almost swear you’ve heard him somewhere before. It is not surprising then, that this collection – which won the inaugural Picador Poetry Prize in 2010 – now sits alongside books by established Picador poets like John Glenday and Ian Duhig , whose works compliment Meier’s gentle yet engaging lyrics. Misadventure ’s themes – growth, death, passion, regret – are similarly recognisable, but the conceits that explore these themes are transformed to become more, and sometimes less, than we might expect. Meier’s various subjects – a man with a patio pressure-washer determined to ‘ achieve one thing today ’ by giving new meaning to the term ‘self-cleansing’ (‘Misadventure’); a grandchild astonished by the wisdom of their supposedly senile grandmother with no time for ‘small-talk’ (‘Compos Mentis’); the inevitably disappointed person who en...
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