Clive James
For admirers of Clive James’s poetry written since he became terminally ill in 2011 (and this reviewer is certainly one), The River in the Sky will pose something of a quandary. In collections like Sentenced to Life (2015) and Injury Time (2017), the poems were generally tough, vulnerable, well-turned and ...
... (read more)Peter Goldsworthy reviews 'Play All: A bingewatcher's notebook' by Clive James
‘You might ask how a man who spent his days with the major poems of Browning could wish to spend his evenings with the minor movies of Chow Yun-fat,’ Clive James asks ...
... (read more)Peter Goldsworthy reviews 'Sentenced to Life' by Clive James
Clive James’s series of memoirs began in 1980 with the Unreliable one. Thirty-five years and four more very funny books later, the Five Lives of Clive have been rounded with a sixth: a slim volume of poems. It is probably also the most reliable, as if, paradoxically, James took more poetic licence when working in prose. The prevailing tone is a long way fro ...
High dungeon was a feeling I knew well
When mockery from men weighed on my soul.
As your Prime Minister I went through hell,
If I can say so without hyperbowl.
If I were well again, I’d walk for miles,
My name a synonym for tirelessness.
On Friday nights I’d go out on the tiles: ... (read more)
Much as I loved you in the snow and ice,
Side-slipping down the chute below Spinale –
It’s twenty years now since we saw Madonna
(Di Campiglio, not Ciconne)