That is essentially the plot, simply a backdrop for a satire on the poetry ‘community’. After a series of misadventures with some highly dubious characters, he returns and after initial acclaim, is “embroiled” in more trouble than ever. He finds himself “grey-listed” and realises he has no alternative but to disappear from the London poetry scene for a time. Lauded as an “emerging poet”, praise quickly turns to opprobrium when a submission Wiese makes to a leading magazine is declared a “crime against originality”, 96% of it derived from other poems. Wiese is in trouble for two separate plagiarism sprees, the first of which feels like a fairly traditional form of plagiarism, the second extremely unusual. Mackenzie reviews Dead Souls by Sam Riviere (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021 )ĭead Souls is prose fiction and concerns a subject Sam Riviere, author of three Faber poetry collections, knows well: poets! I think it is fair to say that the poets do not come over particularly well, seen through the eyes of his jaundiced, unnamed narrator – editor of a literary magazine – and Solomon Wiese, who tells the narrator his story through the night at a London Travelodge hotel bar during an international poetry festival.
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