Northern Soul

bleak streetscape photograph

Ron Silliman

2014

Shearsman Books

Northern Soul is the second poem in a major sequence entitled Universe, following on from Revelator, published by BookThug in Canada in 2013. Universe is a work that, were Ron Silliman to live long enough, would take him three centuries to complete; it is a poem of globalization and post-global poetics (an important reason for publishing several sections outside the author’'s native USA). Northern Soul is a book-length poem of observation and reminiscence, a kaleidoscope of impressions occasioned by visits to Lancashire, in the north-west of England, where the author has several times appeared at the Bury Text Festival; Lancashire is also home to the Northern Soul music scene—another moment of US/UK interpenetation. — Small Press Distribution