Caldebroc - Antony Rowland

Caldebroc introduces a range of characters from the Yorkshire and Lancashire borders and beyond, including the Brontes at their naughtiest, and crazed millionaires who try to ban January and pimp their filing cabinets. The title is an old English word for a Manchester district and the book includes a sequence about a friend murdered there in 2013. “Antony Rowland digs the word hoard to unearth sinewy lines of dark material – the insides of buried histories, public and private… Channelling influences such as Geoffrey Hill and Tony Harrison, Rowland sets out a project uniquely his own to rework history in these ‘measures against outrages’. These are formidable sequences, scrupulous to a taint, steeped in the earth.” Scott Thurston “It’s rare to find a poet so brilliantly dexterous with language… In Caldebroc, the reader travels across time and history – from the Brontës’ Haworth, to Icelandic sagas and global financial meltdown. Rowland constantly revives poetic language and, in doing so, uses the full artistic palette. The effect is both ecstatic and celebratory.” James Byrne