Bona Vada

Bona Vada (gay slang for "good looking"), the companion volume to Bona Drag (Shearsman, 2009), again finds Jeremy Reed - described by J.G. Ballard as having "an imagination almost extraterrestrial in its brilliance", and by the rock bandit Pete Doherty as "a legend" - piloting stunning imagery into a vitally modern big city experience. Reed's image-grab often has him refer to himself as a kleptomaniac as his obsessive raids on streetwise visual detail are converted into powerfully original poetry. If Reed's operational grid is principally London's West End, then his exhilaratingly controversial remit continuously pushes poetry's frontiers out into the always excitingly controversially new.