The Horseman's Word by Roger Garfitt - ISBN: 9780099571957
Paperback
A poet’s wild journey: love, madness, and miraculous survival.

The Horseman's Word

  • Paperback

    384 pages

  • Release Date

    15 November 2012

Summary

A wonderfully written memoir by an acclaimed poet.

In a memoir as vivid and unpredictable as any novel, we follow Roger Garfitt on his journey from stable boy to jazz dancer, from Oxford dandy to Sixties drop-out. We see him on horseback with the Riding Master to the Kings of Portugal and in a beatnik pad with Redmond O’Hanlon. We watch as he is introduced to David Bowie and realizes that the wrong one has come as the rock star. We follow him back to the Norfolk village where, as a sm…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780099571957
ISBN-10:0099571951
Author:Roger Garfitt
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Imprint:Vintage
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:384
Release Date:15 November 2012
Weight:275g
Dimensions:198mm x 129mm x 24mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

He’s produced a memoir that deserves to put him on the wider literary map… Garfitt writes beautifully

He’s produced a memoir that deserves to put him on the wider literary map… Garfitt writes beautifully – James Walton * Daily Mail *
Garfitt’s eye for the telling details of character…evidence great skill and fine judgment, but it is when he recounts his descent into madness, that the full range of his narrative gifts emerges… Garfitt relates it so vividly that the reader enters into the madman’s mind and sees the world from his point of view… A superb achievement – John Burnside * Guardian *
His gentle, coaxing tour across the fervid climbs, lonely sloughs and frustrating plateaus of his early English years has a poetic delicacy of expression… Deeply affecting…The Horseman’s Word is a searing act of personal confession * Independent *
A pungently beautiful piece of writing… This is no nostalgia piece: Garfitt’s rich, vivid reminiscences are alive to the hardship and petty injustices of the times and inextricably entwined with his own ponderous, impassioned attempts to discover and assert his own personality * Metro *

About The Author

Roger Garfitt

A freelance writer since winning the Gregory Award in 1974, Roger Garfitt has been Poetry Critic of London Magazine, Editor of Poetry Review, Writing Fellow at UEA and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Swansea University. He runs Poetry Masterclasses for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education at Madingley Hall. He was married to Frances Horovitz, whose Collected Poems he edited after her early death from cancer. He made another life in Colombia, reporting for Granta and London Review of Books. Now remarried and living in Shropshire, he performs Poetry and Jazz with the John Williams Septet and jazz composer Nikki Iles, and Poetry & Dulcimer Music with Sue Harris on the hammered dulcimer. His Selected Poems, which includes extracts from his journals, is published by Carcanet Press.

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