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Mark Hyatt (1940-1972) lived at the center and the
fringes of the bohemian underground in 1960s Britain. In the
half-century since his death, his work has been known almost
exclusively by word-of-mouth. Drawing on a full range of archival
sources, So Much For Life is the first comprehensive edition of his
poems.
Sam Ladkin is Senior Lecturer at the University of
Sussex.
Luke Roberts is a poet and writer. He works at King's
College London.
"A cigarette paper separates the life of Mark Hyatt and the poetry
of Mark Hyatt. To encounter his work, presented in book form for
the first time in So Much For Life, is to encounter an
unapologetically precarious and bittersweet queer voice that was
always at risk of being lost, even as the work was being written. .
. What emerges from So Much For Life is a world of tender, furious
feeling." —Andrew Spragg, The Poetry Review
"Hyatt suggests that sexuality of any kind is a longing for
relation and a way of knowing the self. But so is writing, so is
poetry, and so is any kind of social activity. For Hyatt, queer
sexuality is a given, not, to adopt the language of the day, a
'social problem.' And in the bohemian enclaves of early 1960s
London, he found a context in which his queerness—which along with
his race and class sometimes rendered him precarious—could be
nurtured and protected."—David Grundy, Harriet Books
“You can tell Hyatt can dance from the length of his lines. You can
also feel the courtesy he extends to words in that he gives each
one its space. He moves you. He has a touch of San Francisco in his
grammatical manner. But he is not American, he’s an
original."—Fanny Howe
“Reading the poems of the once lost and now thrillingly
rediscovered Mark Hyatt, I’ve found a poet of moving conundrum, of
brutality and tenderness, who can see a lover as both ‘my ruin and
within me the life,’ who knows the dilemma of being a poet while
believing that ‘the dearest of what you remember/must never be
spoken even to tree boughs.’ Hyatt left a music I can’t stop
hearing now, gratefully.”—Carl Phillips
"A selection of Mark Hyatt’s poetry has been lovingly gathered
together by editors Luke Roberts and Sam Ladkin, and the astounding
claritas and candour of the lyrics have a bold range across the
plainstyle spectrum. . . . Extraordinary, visionary, wildly clever,
words can’t quite cover what these ‘infinite stunning’ poems do
with their meanings, across such a bewildering range." —Adam
Piette, Blackbox Manifold
“‘Here’s to the high explosive death bird | That troubles the
vegetation on language’ and about time too. At last this generous
selection of Mark Hyatt’s work will broadcast his full power to
those who are able to take it. And Hyatt’s poems are filthily sexy.
If you revel in indeterminacy, up yours! – prepare for a loving
punch in the gut.”—John Wilkinson
"Can't get the poems off my skin, like ink or mud or raw biscuit
dough. I don't understand all of Mark Hyatt's poetry; I don't
understand all of Emily Dickinson's either. They both wrote from
unspoken interior personal experience that underpins everything in
our culture. Don’t miss these poems. I resisted, at first, until
his words and life story tore my heart open and moved in; now
nothing will get him out."—Judy Grahn
"So Much For Life is the most extensive collection to date of the
late Mark Hyatt’s flagrantly embodied, daringly vernacular poetry.
. . [a] feverish, persistent voice."—Oluwaseun Olayiwola, TLS
"It seems like some kind of miracle that Nightboat Books has
published a two-hundred page collection [of Hyatt’s poetry], along
with Sam Ladkin and Luke Roberts’s illuminating introduction,
comprehensive bibliography and painstakingly detailed set of
editorial notes. . . However deep the despair in this collection,
Mark Hyatt finds ways to affirm, celebrate and wonder." —Ian
Seed, PN Review
"2023 has been the year of Mark Hyatt: the posthumous publication
of Love, Leda (Peninsula) and So Much for
Life (eds. Sam Larkin & Luke Roberts, Nightboat) have changed
UK and queer literature forever." —So Mayer, Lunate
"[Hyatt's] story is incredible, his poetry – standing aside from
his biography, but as ever and not, informed by it – is so
contemporary, so hilarious, so stark, it is hard to believe he was
writing in the 60s. . . I could quote him endlessly, and I am
grateful to the editors for bringing these poems properly into
print." —Rachael Allen, Granta
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