Austerity Measures by Adrian Clarke

Description

“Austerity Measures start in the shadow of the City of London with a set of Penumbrals and work out across time and space – terrestrial and outer – with combative intent, arriving at Dead Ends, a seven-step refusal of the austere rewards offered by Dante’s heaven. Minimalist word-counts – 28-word ‘sonnets’ in the title sequence – take Dichten=condensare for granted; everything else is up for grabs.

Where other poets have claimed to ‘renovate’ the sonnet, Clarke has sandblasted the walls from the inside, leaving only the bleached skeletons of words, and their teasing connections and their breathtaking enjambments.” – Robert Sheppard on Possession

“There’s an important question about form being raised here: is the crisis so urgent or the connections between things so dynamically complex that more measured poetry is irrelevant, pointless, just too slow?” – David Kennedy on Eurochants

Here is a recent review of Austerity Measures.