Peter Reading, Perduta Gente

Perduta Gente, a Poetry Book Society Choice, garnered international attention for Reading. The book has a strong single vision put forward in untitled poems, prose pieces, photocopied newspapers, and excerpts from secret documents, all on unnumbered pages, so that it can be read in any order. “Perduta Gente is the unmitigated summation of human catastrophe Reading has been moving towards…the ills of humanity, unmitigable though inflected by changing times, are Reading’s theme, and this time he’s managed to get most of them in.”