Hotel Anonymous

The poems in Hotel Anonymous are about lives we don't lead as much as those we do, the enigma of one life as opposed to another. They explore a sense of being other, of life as if someone else has lived it, rubbing up against the unsettling and porous boundary between imagination and memory, fiction and fact, between 'the waltz of the blood, the self-deceiving heart' ('The dead of night'). Mike Barlow, previous winner of the National Poetry Competition and author of three prior poetry collections and several pamphlets, is established as one of Britain's most gifted poets writing today. His latest oeuvre does not disappoint.

'A new collection from Mike Barlow and you know it'll be good. I think I would recognise that voice anywhere, the deep seriousness lightened here and there by wry humour, that exactly right image, the inspired word choice that keeps the poems always surprising and fresh. An unmistakable taste of the poet's home county, Lancashire, its landscapes and its characters but also there are tender love poems which moved me. There is even ('Building a Church with Maddy and Lewis') the best poem ever written about Lego! Just wonderful.'

- Carole Bromley