Gate of Lilacs carcanet I had always thought the

I had always thought the critical essay and the poem were closely related forms

Moving from the melodic to the political

’  - Fiona Sampson

the familiar and the strange in poems which cast a sharp eye over their subject matter and return with wry

This unmissable debut promises to speak about race in the UK as eloquently and with the same urgency and force as Claudia Rankine s CITIZEN did in the US

Gate of Lilacs carcanet I had always thought theOver a period of fifteen years Clive James learned French by almost no other method than reading la recherche du temps perdu. Then he spent half a century trying to get up to speed with Proust's great novel in two different languages. Gate of Lilacsis the unique product of James's love and engagement with Proust's eternal masterpiece. With la recherche du temps perdu, Proust, in James's words, 'followed his creative instinct all the way until his