After the Rehearsals

Having received praise for his recent work Human Archaeology - a compelling exploration of the meaning of memory and history an interesting special form of poetic plate-spinning - Ian Gouges latest book is a shift into new territory. After The Rehearsals is a prose poem narrative in which the poems - although they stand on their own - are akin to chapters in a work of fiction. Reading them sequentially draws the reader into the lives of the books characters. Writing in this way we get to the essence behind the narrative much more readily and uncover a story told through a composite of sharp and memorable images.