From Professor Murasaki's Notebooks on the Effects of Lightning on the Human Body

Overview

A John Latham poem is a like a precipitation: images coalesce around a single memory the way ice crystallizes around the smallest particle to form a snowflake; the strange logic that constructs them is unique each time. Passionate, satirical, mysterious, the poems in his sixth collection capture the vibrancy of a childhood that still bewitches him half a century later, alongside the cruel betrayals of old age, and the fresh possibilities bound up in each new encounter.

Reviews

"A poetry of sensitivity such as many novels offer. The detail is exact, the spirit of the past conjured through the words most feelingly." —Peter Porter, Observer "The poetic effects are subtle… yet he is able to make the tiniest details sing. Unsentimental, plain, but rhythmically invigorating…" —John Greening, Poetry Review "Spectacular writing, with lines that hang around in the mind long after you've read them." —Ian McMillan, Iron

"Latham keeps a weather eye on life, seeking out new connections and things not yet discovered. His poems glisten with new insights, both enthralling and consoling." —Jane Swanson, Dundee University Review of the Arts

Author Biography

John Latham has worked for over 40 years as a research scientist specializing in cloud formation. A recipient of several medals from the Royal Meteorological Society, he was, for eight years, president of the International Commission on Atmospheric Electricity, and founded the Atmospheric Physics Research Group at UMIST (which later became the University of Manchester's Centre for Atmospheric Science).