Brian Docherty is a resident alien. He grew up in Scotland in the 1960s listening to Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon on the radio, hitched across Europe in the 1970s to an FM soundtrack, and followed the Vikings West to Vinland, that green utopia where everything seemed possible , only to find himself caught in the blizzard of history .
To find out more about Brian’s poetry books, click on the cover images below.
POETRY COLLECTIONS:
In My Dreams Again
Brian Docherty’s fifth full collection of new poems, written in north London over several years. Once again, he takes the reader on a journey to places some readers might be familiar with, and some detours and side trips. His favourite locations, such as San Francisco, are on the tour itinerary, narrated in the blend of politics, social comment and black humour for which his work is noted, but there might also be a few surprises along the way.
Independence Day
A book of journeys, literal and metaphorical, making use of ekphrastic techniques. The poems here start out from north London, taking the reader to San Francisco, New York, Baku, Kuala Lumpur, France, Russia, and back again, while remaining firmly grounded in the writer’s locale. Political realities and social issues are not neglected; these poems move to a contemporary music without losing seriousness of purpose without resorting to agit-prop.
Woke Up This Morning
Woke up this Morning is an index of possibilities, a hitch-hiker s guide to cultural alienation and appropriation, from Glasgow to San Francisco and back. It is a book about real and imagined journeys to other worlds that always seem less alien than our own, a series of studies in estrangement and exile Stanley Spencer in Cookham, Dracula in Whitby, Gauguin on Tahiti, Otis Redding sitting on the dock of the Bay. Listen carefully and somewhere on the radio-dial between the Voice of America and Radio Landlady, you can still hear the music of a place called home, where everyone is nostalgic for different things , and each New World can still be imagined with wild surmise .
The View from the Villa Delerium
Brian Docherty’s 8th book of poetry, written in St Leonards-on-Sea between 2018 and 2019. The poems mix politics and social comment with more personal work – with cameo appearances from the local mermaids.
Blue to the Edge
Brian’s 7th book of poetry. A sequence of memorial poems for Brian’s wife Rosemary, who died unexpectedly in January 2016.
This book is available from Independent bookshops in Hastings (Bookkeeper, BookBuster and Hasting Bookshop) or directly from the author.
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