To the god of rain

Forty poems which attempt to use Futurist painting, with particular reference to Umberto Boccioni's triptych States of Mind, as well as work by other Futurist painters, as the visual language for a period of turbulent personal change. The poems continue the work of interpretation which the paintings began, using them as a frame within which personal emotion can be explored. The paintings provide the visual language for the poems; the poems provide a semiotic interpretation of the paintings. Central to this project is a sonnet sequence scattered through the book as a means of providing unity to the collection; the sonnets themselves, individually, are a loose reworking of the traditional form, experimenting in the hinterland between free verse and metre and rhyme, trying to 'update' the form and bring it into a new earshot, with a nod, perhaps, to Geoffrey Hill's reworking of the same form. The first twelve lines of each are linked conceptually and are linked by assonantal sounds, but are loosely proffered. The final couplet is always comprised of near or pure rhyme.