It’s impossible to cover the many topics discussed. Riviere also delights in inserting ridiculous (yet somehow representative) abecedarian lists of poets’ names, magazine titles and plot devices.īarbed arrows are shot firmly into the posterior of poetry anthologies left to moulder on the shelves of secondhand bookshops, the seriousness of poets about their art and their inconsistent attempts at modesty … the desperate attempts of London poets to conceal from each other the parental support they’d all received allowing them to live in the capital Solomon Wiese’s 200+ page monologue is peppered with repetition and accumulation of detail as if searching, in real time, for the most precise phrase to hammer down every thought. The prose is highly stylised, but not difficult to read or understand. The technique lends the narrative a relentless drive, in keeping with the unwavering self-obsession of the characters. Riviere deals with a range of issues, continually twisting and turning arguments on all sides of a question, often over several pages, and it’s important to note that the book contains just one paragraph from beginning to end, influenced by Thomas Bernhard. It’s hilarious, disturbing and provocative. That is essentially the plot, simply a backdrop for a satire on the poetry ‘community’. After a series of misadventures with some highly dubious characters, he returns and after initial acclaim, is “embroiled” in more trouble than ever. He finds himself “grey-listed” and realises he has no alternative but to disappear from the London poetry scene for a time.
Lauded as an “emerging poet”, praise quickly turns to opprobrium when a submission Wiese makes to a leading magazine is declared a “crime against originality”, 96% of it derived from other poems.
Wiese is in trouble for two separate plagiarism sprees, the first of which feels like a fairly traditional form of plagiarism, the second extremely unusual. Mackenzie reviews Dead Souls by Sam Riviere (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021 )ĭead Souls is prose fiction and concerns a subject Sam Riviere, author of three Faber poetry collections, knows well: poets! I think it is fair to say that the poets do not come over particularly well, seen through the eyes of his jaundiced, unnamed narrator – editor of a literary magazine – and Solomon Wiese, who tells the narrator his story through the night at a London Travelodge hotel bar during an international poetry festival.
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