Xenia, etc.

In his new book of poems, Anthony Caleshu writes after the visual art of Julie Curtiss, Jadé Fadojutimi, Shara Hughes, Shio Kusaka, Henry Taylor, Emma Webster, and Jonas Wood (also included, a musical interlude after the music of Pixies). Poems move in and out of interiors, portraits, landscapes, abstractions, and the concept of xenia - Greek for 'hospitality', later adopted by the Romans as a category of 'still-life' painting featuring welcoming platters of fruit and the like. If ekphrastic in tradition, the poems privilege lyric and narrative in(ter)vention, springboarding from the visual arts into new spaces of speculation, transformation, and wonder. 'Anthony Caleshu has come up with a huge holiday of a book. Not only ambitious and thought-provoking but also (a rare combination) fun. From the tricksy introductory 'Epigraphs' to the 'Endnotes', he keeps us on our toes (if your brains are your toes?), the references and jokes flying every which (witch) way. We begin in the company of basketballs and cheese-plants, rollerchairs, and dinosaurs - and other things not often met with in poetry, in my experience, and go from there. To give you some idea of the mood: Caleshu quotes Epicurus's description of friendship as 'the most important means by which wisdom acquires happiness' - you could say the same about Xenia etc., as a means by which wisdom acquires happiness. What's not to like?' -Selima Hill