Peter Carpenter’s poetry is radiant with quiet surprises, important moments captured in the folds of an old document wallet, in back gardens or on winter sea-fronts, buried in the sand or hidden by the noise of a football crowd. Such moments take flight to uncover a distinctive take on both ‘the here and now’ and the echoes of public and private histories. After the Goldrush is thus of its time and about time, in the attentive, skilful hands of a poet truly hitting his stride.
One year's the history
Of Europe, time runs barefoot on the cinder-track
At the White City
(from 'Namings')
"… a new voice, precise and distinct, and therefore, doubly welcome."
George Szirtes
"In short, Peter Carpenter is a masterly portrait-painter."
Matthew Jarvis, English
"always original and enjoyable poems…there’s something modestly dazzling about Peter Carpenter’s writing, but also something wonderfully spare and taut… it reminds me in places of the modern pastorals of R.F. Langley… the tone jinks and darts from the tender to the sardonic, the wry to the comic."
CJ Allen, Staple
"Peter Carpenter has the ability to pull the rug from under your feet at the very moment when you think you’ve got his number."
Jeremy Page, The Frogmore Papers
Peter Carpenter is co-director of Worple Press and was recently Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Reading. His fourth collection of poetry is Catch from Shoestring; and he recently contributed to Iain Sinclair's London: City of Disappearances (Penguin).