Here's a sneak preview from Michael Symmons Robert's interview in our Spring Bulletin.
"The title Ransom came when around half the poems were finished or taking shape. The word seemed to make sense – to me at least – of the territory these new poems were exploring, albeit from very different angles. Ransom as in ransomware, ransom theory, incarnation and atonement, captivity and release, liberty and limit.
It brought me back to a focus on the body as (in the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s phrase) “the best picture of the human soul.” Wittgenstein’s thinking about the corporeal and Simone Weil’s ideas on necessity and love were with me in the making of these poems, as were wider cultural takes on “ransom”, from gangster movies, games, songs. The poems began to pull in shadow boxes, security cameras and horses’ heads."
Join the Poetry Book Society today to read more about the creative processes behind Ransom in the PBS Spring Bulletin.