It's ony really since Gaud was accepted for publication that I have started to ask myself what it is I do when I'm writing poetry, what it is that really preoccupies me. These things are probably clearer to other people, and I'm immensely grateful to David Briggs and Alison Brackenbury for having offered their comments for the back cover. Their words will not only give readers a sense of what to expect, but they've made me see my work from new perspectives, too.
'Everywhere in David Clarke's Gaud the senses are engaged: "fuck-off cologne" assaults the nose; mouths bloom with cognac, smoke, tongues and wry-baroque irony. But, there's a very continental intelligence at work here too. In these poems the body is political space, tussled over by sharps, transvestites, revolutionaries, pornographers and lovers; and the landscape is a semiotic battlefield, from which this sharp-eyed reporter delivers his slant despatches with "an extraordinary level of wit and detail". Frustrating to discover a new writer of such range and talent; but, there's no point grumbling when "this is what I really want."' (David Briggs)
'David Clarke’s exact, unsparing poems are executed with an eerie coolness. His intriguing narratives have their own sensual music, as subtle as his rhymes:
For me, a man must love his art, its cost—
choose his poison, drain it to the last.'
(Alison Brackenbury)
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