The acclaimed poet Christopher Reid distils Charles Boyle's six books of poems into
The Disguise: Poems 1977-2001
, recovering a notable one-time poet, now known as a publisher and writer of fiction and non-fiction, from poetic neglect. Charles Boyle established a reputation as a sharp, wry, disabused observer of social mores.
Paleface
, published by Faber, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and
The Age of Cardboard and String
, also from Faber, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Award. But in 2001 the well ran dry. Since the first year of the twenty-first century he has not put poetic pen to paper even once. The poems remain vital and fascinating, but they have about them also a kind of archaic cast: here we find the quintessential white male Englishness from the late twentieth century on display as if in a museum. Here too is the excitement of abroad (North Africa especially), and there are ghosts, absences, exile, and evasions: in hindsight, these poems offer clues to their own disappearance after thirty notable years spent partly in the sun.