My Father's Trapdoor

The mysterious complicity that exists between the living and the dead is the subject of this book, in which Peter Redgrove winds inner and outer worlds closer and closer together. In a number of moving autobiographical poems, he both recalls and re-imagines his late parents. He speaks of and to those who know, in the words of Robert Duncan, 'the god-step at the margins of thought'. These new poems explore the vast potential of our life now and the possible varieties of an afterlife. Peter Redgrove is working the rich seam of his maturity. The freshness and vigor of his inspiration continues unabated. Whether in poems about violins, waxworks, frozen champagne or the Waterworks at Staines, he is always extending his immensely versatile repertoire. With its ardent precision, confirming sensuality and ironic cordiality his voice is indeed that of a Visionary Emeritus.