Duhig turns on the light

"As the notes at the back of Ian Duhig's new collection tell us, Umberto Eco has said that 'all the problems of the Western world emerged in the middle ages'. This statement looks compelling, post-9/11: the problems of the Middle Ages have indeed come back to haunt our post-Enlightenment dream. It is time to reconnect.

Ever since his first collection Duhig has had an ear to the keyhole of the middle ages, listening to its echoes of meaning in our language, our symbols. The Speed of Dark takes this on as a whole collection — a collection which does not in any way feel dry, or learned (though it is very learned). This book is funny, dark, brutal and sophisticated, adopting the often dialectical religious world-view, the transgressive satire, the modernness of the medievals — and by extension the medievalness of us — via two 14th-century French manuscripts..."

My review of Ian Duhig's extremely interesting new collection, The Speed of Dark, is now up on The Poem website.

Of course, now it's up there all I can think of is the things I didn't say: always the way.