Heaven Unbuilt: A treasury of well-loved poems for old children
Heaven Unbuilt encompasses the entirety of Colin Dodds' career as a poet, which spanned more than twenty years, beginning in the late 1990s. It includes selections from early books like The Last Man on the Moon and The Blue Blueprint, the entire Spill-O cycle, decades of poems from bars, selected lyrics from the band Adultogram and the 2018 collection Spokes of an Uneven Wheel.
"Eloquent, elegant, emotionally and intellectually engaging, deftly crafted, impressively memorable... the ideal showcase for the tangible results of a lifetime of creating poetry by a master wordsmith... A major volume of verse and one to be brought back to again and again and again, -Heaven Unbuilt' is especially and unreservedly recommended..." - Midwest Book Review
"There is a lot here. Of realism, of life in your face, of fantasy, of just about everything one could write about over those twenty-two years... a winding journey of running from demons, chasing angels, cris-crossing the country... Dodds is a craftsman who has an innate ability to create unique imagery that flows like a waterfall of harsh realism... heaven and hell, words from urinals, apocalypse, dead choruses, dancing clouds of saturated skies of imagination loosed as a torrent upon the page. There are bars, drug dealers, politicians, great truths and great lies... a cacophony of images and sounds exploding upon the page. Dodds proves to be a master crafter of the poem with remarkable fresh if not disturbing images... It may take you into the brisk leaf filled air of autumn, to the first flurries of winter to complete the read. It will be well worth it. Poets like Dodds only pass through every so often. Get the book and throw a punch at life." - North of Oxford
These poems have appeared in more than three hundred publications. The late poet and songwriter David Berman (Silver Jews, Actual Air) said of them: "These are very good poems. For moments I could even feel the old feelings when I read them." This edition of Heaven Unbuilt is complete, having been assembled to mark Colin's retirement from poetry.
"When I read Colin's work, one of his own lines comes to mind: "What persists / is glad amazement." His work consistently delights with humor, inventiveness, a blessed dose of sarcasm and, yes, wisdom (despite his best intentions). We are all "born for that other thing," and this is that other thing." - Sharon Mesmer, author of Greetings From My Girlie Leisure Place
"People pick up a book of poetry at leisure, but can find themselves stopped in their tracks, pacing the room, weeping at an insight or a way of looking at things that simply hadn't found that magic formula of words to express before. Colin Dodds is the kind of writer who believes in this." - Blognostics
"A vividly and inventively dark dystopia... This is intelligent writing, the images are often startling and usually thought-provoking... Powerful work and well worth anyone's time." - Pulsar Poetry
"Narratives breathe life into the overlooked... Spill-O is the martyr of the authentic conscious mind, journeying and suffering at the hands of the corruption and sickness that plagues the linguistic and sentimental plains... honest and unflinching..." - Furious Gazelle
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