By Steve Xerri
Steve Xerri [stevexerripoetry.co.uk] has been a teacher, musician and designer. He was Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year 2017 and has had work featured in numerous print and online magazines. His first pamphlet Mutter/Land was recently published by Oystercatcher Press [http://www.oystercatcherpress.com/product-category/2020/ ].
Remedies and Recipes was written in the firm conviction that the pandemic is just the latest manifestation of human disregard for our fellow-creatures, and that we are just starting to realise the enormous cost that may be exacted for our exploitative relationships with them.
This poised rage of knowing nothing changes but the set for our human farce (from sheep field to taxi cab) is a gem. The resonance from one century’s superstitious and brutalised disregard for nature to another’s is brilliant, witty and shocking. Xerri’s clever language mutations conjour the two Elizabethan worlds completely, then strips them bare. Both so different. Both the same.
A topical yet timeless poem, and it’s not easy to do both. Language is both contemporary and rich, unsentimentally poetic with great irony at the end.