Dancers in Daylight

In the title poem, set in Rome, a chance meeting with the dying Rudolf Nureyev strikes the poet, himself a dancer, as hallucinatory. Along with the poems prompted by his mother's death, it is one of several unsettling poems in this collection.
 
Yet a celebratory strain runs through the book, providing a counter-balance: there are poems which celebrate active life, vigorous sexuality, and the subtle steps of the tango. The result is a characteristically robust and varied collection which continues the vein of subtle dandyism for which Howell is renowned.
 
Anthony Howell was born in 1945. A former dancer with the Royal Ballet and subsequently a performance artist - he founded the Theatre of Mistakes during the 1970s - he has always been as active in literature as he has in movement. Anvil published his Selected Poems in 2000.