Overview

Taz Rahman's East of the Sun, West of the Moon is named after the 1935 jazz standard, and like any great jazz tune - many of which inspire these poems - this collection is full of improvisation, innovation with language, and it demands a quality of listening carefully to the world, of paying attention. Many of these poems are from the perspective of a flaneur, someone who wanders through the city – in this case Cardiff – registering impressions about the people and things observed. This includes a deep fascination for nature as encountered in city parks and on the banks of the Taff as it winds its way through the metropolis.

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9781781727348

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Reviews

""Assured and experimental, East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon... defies hierarchies, without being political; instead, it's refreshingly experimental, lyrical, and intelligent..."" - Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine ""This is a poet with an originality of approach and a well-developed craft."" - London Grip ""East of the Sun, West of the Moon is a linguistic tour-de-force. Its liquid, jazz-inspired phrasing delights with sonic leaps and swerves of imagination... Contemporary Cardiff becomes inextricably, joyously plaited with the Indian subcontinent... There are shadows here too, racist violence exposed alongside 'Bodies winter scrubbed / toothpaste white'. The overall effect is the creation of a rich, distinctive poetic universe, at times evoking brutality but throughout teeming with vitality and heart."" - John McCullough ""...centred on the city of Cardiff, these poems use their freely mouthed musicality and fluent sensory associations to locate life in Wales within ever-widening circles of world - and vice versa. Composed daringly and hopefully 'to the / chime of ropey leashes clattering flagpoles', this is a book that modern British poetry has long needed, and which readers will richly enjoy."" - Jeremy Noel-Tod ""In vivifying and vital language here are poems that hymn nature into being, riffing on the complexities and inter-lockings of life (as they tell of briars that perspire and black grouse displaced to the ocean.) This debut is deceptive, for here is no novice but rather an artist in full song, whose palette is exhilaratingly vivid. Here, Rahman paints us the world in all the colours of grammar, discovery and truth. A marvellous, marvelling collection to both savour and hold close."" - Jon Gower ""So satisfying to see such wide and various use of form and language in a pleasing first collection."" - Gillian Clarke

Author Information

Taz Rahman is a Cardiff based poet, writer and literary content creator. He has been published in Poetry Wales, Bad Lilies, Interpreter’s House, South Bank Poetry, Anthropocene, Propel, Atrium, Abridged, The Lonely Crowd, Atrium, Planet – The Welsh Internationalist, Honest Ulsterman, Nation Cymru, Culture Matters and various anthologies. He has been selected to be the Chairperson of Poetry Wales Magazine’s Readers’ Committee from September 2022 and is editor of the climate emergency themed literary journal Modron alongside poets Zoë Brigley and Kristian Evans. He was one of the judges for the 2021 Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition. In 2021 he was awarded a place in the Literature Wales writer development programme Representing Wales, mentored by Zoë Brigley, and he was selected for the 2023 Hay Festival Writers at Work scheme.

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