Paper Bark Press
Smoke Proofs
James Taylor
1996, 88 pages, softcover, 215x150mm
ISBN 0 9586482 2 0
Cover photograph by Graham Monro
'James Taylor is a poet of forms ... I'm tempted to call him a scholar-poet, but this doesn't convey the two-fisted education he gained in the printshops of Glasgow's back streets ... Taylor's tropes thrum with the history of book making. ... His postmodernism is the result of a break-out from years steeped in study of modernism. A thorough man, he took Mallarmé as that movement's first post. Taylor's range is broad ... lt is his use of form that energises his narrative and prevents clutter.
'I have followed his career closely, waiting for the volume that would establish his reputation as a poet of the first rank, once and for all ... Smoke Proofs is that book.'
~ Robert Adamson