Peter Reading, ∂

Reading’s death statement features his “death mask on the cover.” His own consolations of “verse, viticulture and love” are mirrored in the extended swansong of Chinoiserie, a sequence of versions of the 8th-century Chinese poet Li Po, while the blunter associations of his title are encrypted in the book’s progressively shorter lyrics: obsolete, obscene and obit (he died). Now out of print, this book is included in Collected Poems Volume III: Poems 1997-2003 (2003, Bloodaxe).