Alex Priestley’s ‘Dérive’ is a wandering prose poem sequence, drawing the reader through series of spaces, repetitions, and musings in an imagined city. Priestley builds the prose line like a gathering of clouds caught at the edges of Spring, offering his poems with a force as gentle and chaotic as hills forming.
“A mysterious wisp of a book… it’s a meditation on city architecture and memory, set everywhere and nowhere. The dreamy tone is reminiscent of John Ashbery: ‘Land cohered into / landscapes when it had something to / join up around, to distance itself from.’” — Tristram Fane Saunders, TLS
“Alex Priestly’s Dérive is a precise amble through a discrete series of prose poems which have inspired the ‘dew point of thought’. Artful, atmospheric and architectural, this is a poetry of seriously looking at how the world is constructed and from what materials. At times the speaker feels like a philosophical urban planner, at others an eye, taking everything in. Modernist in its ambition, this beautifully crafted pamphlet is a glimpse into the mind of an aesthetically rapt and contemplative poet.” — Tom Branfoot, author of Boar
‘Dérive’ is printed letterpress on an Adana 8×5 in a limited edition of 50 copies, of which 5 are case bound, on Somerset Book White 115gsm and Hahnemuhle Bugra Butten 130gsm covers. It is stitched in a unique two section binding of 24 pages.
Alex Priestley’s ‘Dérive’ is a wandering prose poem sequence, drawing the reader through series of spaces, repetitions, and musings in an imagined city. Priestley builds the prose line like a gathering of clouds caught at the edges of Spring, offering his poems with a force as gentle and chaotic as hills forming.
“A mysterious wisp of a book… it’s a meditation on city architecture and memory, set everywhere and nowhere. The dreamy tone is reminiscent of John Ashbery: ‘Land cohered into / landscapes when it had something to / join up around, to distance itself from.’” — Tristram Fane Saunders, TLS
“Alex Priestly’s Dérive is a precise amble through a discrete series of prose poems which have inspired the ‘dew point of thought’. Artful, atmospheric and architectural, this is a poetry of seriously looking at how the world is constructed and from what materials. At times the speaker feels like a philosophical urban planner, at others an eye, taking everything in. Modernist in its ambition, this beautifully crafted pamphlet is a glimpse into the mind of an aesthetically rapt and contemplative poet.” — Tom Branfoot, author of Boar
‘Dérive’ is printed letterpress on an Adana 8×5 in a limited edition of 50 copies, of which 5 are case bound, on Somerset Book White 115gsm and Hahnemuhle Bugra Butten 130gsm covers. It is stitched in a unique two section binding of 24 pages.