Böcker av Cliff Forshaw

French Leave follows RE:VERB in which Cliff Forshaw recreated Rimbaud's terrestrial adventures from the Hooligan Poet and Seer in bohemian Paris, through the years as a tough merchant and gun-runner in Africa, to his death aged thirty-seven in a Marseilles hospital. This new collection plays variations on the themes and forms of French verse from mid-nineteenth century Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, through Baudelaire and Rimbaud, to Valery and Apollinaire on the eve of the First World War. Among the well-known figures, Forshaw invents further fin-de-siècle personae that might have existed, and possibly even did.

An intriguing and idiosyncratic book, RE:VERB energetically recreates Rimbaud's terrestrial adventures: from the Hooligan Poet and Seer in bohemian Paris, through the years as tough merchant and gun-runner in Africa, to end with his death aged thirty-seven in a Marseilles hospital. Cliff Forshaw's verse narrative allows us to glimpse Rimbaud's life, travels and the diverse characters he dealt with through the disillusioned poet's own eyes, offset by the reports and asides of those who knew and observed him.