Self-Portrait with the Happiness

By David Tait

Part self-portrait, part love affair, the poems in Self-Portrait with The Happiness are obsessed with moments elsewhere. Rural England contends with immense Chinese cities via Thailand and Japan. The effect is a collection which craves the exotic in the everyday: puppeteers communicating through their puppets, sonnets sketched on the snowy rooftops of cars and Chinese dragons flying above the Lakeland fells.

David Tait is one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary poetry, and this eagerly awaited collection confirms the promise of his pamphlet, Love's Loose Ends, which won the Poetry Business Competition, judged by Simon Armitage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SmithDoorstop Books
• Release date: Feb 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910367261

David Tait

David Tait lives in Guangzhou, China, where he works as a teacher, His poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies including Ambit, Magma, Poetry Review and The Rialto and his pamphlet Love's Loose Ends won the Poetry Business pamphlet competition (as judged by Simon Armitage) in 2010. Tait first began writing at Leeds University when taking an undergraduate creative writing module taught by Amanda Dalton. He has since attended workshops and writing days, as well as an MA in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He was "House Poet" at Manchester Royal Exchange for the Carol Ann Duffy & Friends poetry series between 2010 - 2013. In 2014 Self-Portrait with The Happiness was Shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and also received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors.