Laurie Duggan: The Pursuit of Happiness
Published 15 April 2012
Paperback, 94pp. 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848612228
Download a PDF of the introduction to this volume here.
The Pursuit of Happiness collects shorter poems written during and after the composition of Crab & Winkle, and concludes with 'The Nathan Papers', an earlier and longer work written in Australia. The poems address the state of the art and the state of the nation, investigating the spaces left for pleasure in this new dark age. As anthropological investigations, they shift from Robert Creeley, burgers and South African wine on Charing Cross Road to images of Santa Claus in Anglo-Greek Paphos and Japanese tourist signs in the Brontë country.
Duggan’s poetry has the virtue too that it never "abandons the local". Like Paul Blackburn… he builds his work out of what he finds in, on or about the premises… —Tony Baker
Duggan has always been especially good at recording those moments when the world seems miraculously to reveal itself without anybody's assistance… One could imagine [him] being very impatient about poets with vatic assumptions.
—Martin Duwell
Read a review from John Latta's blog here
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