11781 W. Sunset Boulevard

<p>You could study an Ordnance Survey map of the route or you could make annotations concerning Dickens' association with Chatham and many other points but Smith's skill in assimilation will always be ahead of you partly because it assimilates ruthlessly to his own present tense and partly because total assimilation is refused in favour of sheer presence.' -Peter Riley <em>The Fortnightly Review</em></p><p></p><p></p><p><em>The Waste Land</em> may have been smoothed to automatic for the iPad but Simon Smith's <em>Gravesend</em> makes the South-East coast of Dickens and Conrad a place worth missing connections again. All the digital landfill of one London poet's life is here not to mention a book-stopping tribute to Cy Twombly. Line by line Smith is one of the most exciting poet writing in England: if it weren't for the sweet Thames and the Little Chefs he might pass for an American. -Jeremy Noel-Tod</p><p></p>