Books for Independent Thinkers

When Kafka Met Einstein

by James Knox Whittet

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Book Details

  • Paperback
  • 70 pages
  • ISBN 978-0-956572-52-3
  • Publisher Iron Press

Details

When Kafka Met Einstein is the first full collection from Scottish poet James Knox Whittet.

The poems combine the playful and the intellectual, moving easily between Nietzsche and the Teletubbies. Brought up on the island of Islay, some of Knox Whittet’s poetry is inspired by the landscapes and history of Scottish islands, while elsewhere he is at Newport Pagnell Service Station at 3am, or writing about Iris Murdoch’s Alzheimer’s. There is also a poem about the little-known fact that Hitler attended the same school as Wittgenstein.

James Knox Whittet was born and brought up on the Hebridean island of Islay, where his father was head gardener at a small castle. His poems have won the George Crabbe Memorial Award three times. His first poetry pamphlet, A Brief History Of Devotion, was published by Hawthorn Press in 2003; his second, Seven Poems for Engraved Fishermen, was shortlisted for the Callum MacDonald Award from the National Library of Scotland (2004). He has previously edited two acclaimed anthologies for Iron Press: 100 Island Poems of Great Britain and Ireland (2005) and Writers on Islands (2008); the latter was nominated by the Scotsman as one of the Books of the Year. He now lives in Norfolk.

Customer Reviews

Quietly Amazing Review by Orkney
Pauline Stainer in her Foreword is surely right in describing this collection of poems as 'quiety amazing'. It's rare to meet with such artistry, depth of thought and feeling. It's only when you have read a number of these poems many times that you realize the cunsumate skill of the poet. For example, 'Peaches' which Pauline Stainer justly describes as 'magnificient' is written in the same form and intricate rhyme scheme as Keats famous 'Ode To A Nightingale'. How a contemporary poet follow such a traditional form and retain the sensuous depth of Keats writing without sounding the least bit archaic is really quite astonishing. In so many of those poems such as the heartbreaking 'After Dark', 'Moving With The Times', 'Borrowed Words' and others, Knox Whittet uses a complex rhyme scheme to enhance the beauty and wonderful music of the poems which serves to heighten the powerful emotional effect on the reader. Here also is a poet as equally at home in writing about mentally handicapped children as he is writing about Wittgenstein, Kafka, Einstein or Walter Benjamin. Knox Whittet obviously takes great delight in quoting from Proust and other literary greats and I find myself delighting in quoting memorable lines from these poems. 'When Kafka Met Eistein' is a book which expands the mind and deepens the heart. (Posted on 16/03/2012)

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When Kafka Met Einstein