Overview

In The Infernal Garden, Gregory Leadbetter’s poetry leads us into dark and verdant places of the imagination, the edge of the wild where the human meets the more-than-human in the burning green fuse of the living world. This liminal ground becomes a garden of death and rebirth, of sound and voice, in poems that combine the lyric with the mythic, precision with mystery. Responding to the intricate crisis in our relationship to our planet and the life around us, the garden here assumes a haunting, otherworldly aspect, as a space of loss, grief and trial, which nonetheless carries within it the energies of regeneration and growth. At the heart of this bewitching book is the force of language itself – at once disquieting and healing – through which we are drawn to the common roots of art, science, and magic, in exquisite poetry of incantatory power. ""This is heavy-metal poetry, dark and decidedly theatrical."" - Jeremy Wikeley, 'The best poetry books of 2025 so far', The Telegraph.

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9781916760240

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Reviews

'Gregory Leadbetter’s The Infernal Garden - in which the natural world is both revealed and cultivated by a poet of exceptional complexity and clarity - is its own dawn chorus, a multitude of voices, note perfect, brimming and melodious. But sung so gently. Almost hushed. This collection is a masterclass in harmony and pitch.' -- Jim Crace ‘Above the lulling cadences of Leadbetter’s perfect musical ear rises a gothic and prescient vocabulary that sings and also singes. A child is pulled from a flower bed and a plant is torn at its root. A creepy raven is ‘almost human’, while an English summer bodes ‘Saharan dust’, ‘skeleton ash’, ‘dessicated milt’ and ‘strangling thirst.’ These are songs of grief and rupture -- but also of excavation and transcendence. The ‘word’ forges a connection with the 'weird’ (i.e. the ghostly) through Leadbetter’s gifts as a listener and as a master of phrasing, in poems that release an astonishing force of transformative imagination.’ -- Kathryn Maris ‘This is a profoundly-felt but also profoundly-thought collection, which honours, on every page, its commitment to re-enchanting everyday life. Leadbetter knows that enchantment comes with risks, and these poems do not shy away from the darkness. While Leadbetter's poems are tuned into something magical and sometimes occult, their mysteries are carried into the light by his deep understanding of craft, his formal range, and his respect for the traditions in which he works. These poems are not accounts of experience; they summon experience itself.’ -- Patrick McGuinness

'Gregory Leadbetter’s The Infernal Garden - in which the natural world is both revealed and cultivated by a poet of exceptional complexity and clarity - is its own dawn chorus, a multitude of voices, note perfect, brimming and melodious. But sung so gently. Almost hushed. This collection is a masterclass in harmony and pitch.' -- Jim Crace ‘Above the lulling cadences of Leadbetter’s perfect musical ear rises a gothic and prescient vocabulary that sings and also singes. A child is pulled from a flower bed and a plant is torn at its root. A creepy raven is ‘almost human’, while an English summer bodes ‘Saharan dust’, ‘skeleton ash’, ‘desiccated milt’ and ‘strangling thirst.’ These are songs of grief and rupture -- but also of excavation and transcendence. The ‘word’ forges a connection with the 'weird’ (i.e. the ghostly) through Leadbetter’s gifts as a listener and as a master of phrasing, in poems that release an astonishing force of transformative imagination.’ -- Kathryn Maris ‘This is a profoundly-felt but also profoundly-thought collection, which honours, on every page, its commitment to re-enchanting everyday life. Leadbetter knows that enchantment comes with risks, and these poems do not shy away from the darkness. While Leadbetter's poems are tuned into something magical and sometimes occult, their mysteries are carried into the light by his deep understanding of craft, his formal range, and his respect for the traditions in which he works. These poems are not accounts of experience; they summon experience itself.’ -- Patrick McGuinness ‘A deep-dug collection, germinative, tender but dark and not wholly wholesome (in a good way)’ -- Tim Dee

'Gregory Leadbetter’s The Infernal Garden - in which the natural world is both revealed and cultivated by a poet of exceptional complexity and clarity - is its own dawn chorus, a multitude of voices, note perfect, brimming and melodious. But sung so gently. Almost hushed. This collection is a masterclass in harmony and pitch.' -- Jim Crace

'Gregory Leadbetter’s The Infernal Garden - in which the natural world is both revealed and cultivated by a poet of exceptional complexity and clarity - is its own dawn chorus, a multitude of voices, note perfect, brimming and melodious. But sung so gently. Almost hushed. This collection is a masterclass in harmony and pitch.' -- Jim Crace ‘Above the lulling cadences of Leadbetter’s perfect musical ear rises a gothic and prescient vocabulary that sings and also singes. A child is pulled from a flower bed and a plant is torn at its root. A creepy raven is ‘almost human’, while an English summer bodes ‘Saharan dust’, ‘skeleton ash’, ‘dessicated milt’ and ‘strangling thirst.’ These are songs of grief and rupture -- but also of excavation and transcendence. The ‘word’ forges a connection with the 'weird’ (i.e. the ghostly) through Leadbetter’s gifts as a listener and as a master of phrasing, in poems that release an astonishing force of transformative imagination.’ -- Kathryn Maris

Author Information

Gregory Leadbetter’s books and pamphlets of poetry include Caliban (Dare-Gale Press, 2023), a New Statesman Book of the Year 2023; Balanuve, with photographs by Phil Thomson (Broken Sleep, 2021); Maskwork (Nine Arches Press, 2020), longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2021;* The Fetch* (Nine Arches Press, 2016), and The Body in the Well (HappenStance Press, 2007). Recent work for the BBC includes the extended poem Metal City (Radio 3, 2023). A song-cycle featuring poems from The Fetch by the composer and pianist Eric McElroy has been performed internationally, and a recording with the tenor James Gilchrist was released in 2023. He is Professor of Poetry at Birmingham City University.

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