The president of planet Earth
By: David Wheatley
Edition: First North American edition.
Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
Published: 2017
Place of publication: Winston-Salem, NC
Language: eng
Number of pages: 165
ISBN-13: 9781930630833
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: English poetry; Irish authors
Work titles: Poems
Description: In his fifth collection of poems, David Wheatley twins his birthplace and his current home, Ireland and Scotland, to engage issues of globalism, identity, and language. He takes inspiration from the Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, self-nominated President of planet earth, who in a state of apocalyptic rapture envisioned a new world culture, its rise and its dramatic undoing. In The President of planet earth Wheatley brings an experimental sensibility to bear on questions of land and territory, channelling the messianic aspirations of modernism into subversive comedy. We move between pictish pre-history, the imaginary South American nation of   'Oblivia',  and post-independence referendum Scotland. Wheatley marries classical, Gaelic, Scots and continental traditions. He deploys several styles - prose poetry; concrete poetry; translations from Middle Irish, Latin and French; sestinas and sonnets in Scots - to heady effect. The President of planet earth refashions language and the world it shapes, devising a transformative poetics. Publisher's website viewed 08 Dec, 2017.