Farewell Tour

by Stefan Mohamed

ISBN: 9781913917135

Published: 2022-09-22

In Farewell Tour, Stefan Mohamed takes us on a hellish road trip through the psyche of a mean and defeated nation. It is hard to think of a poet who goes further in creating a new poetic register from materials not usually found in poetry. The language of Farewell Tour comes from popular media and social media; it sneers, preens and insinuates. None of this is accidental. Mohamed is a skilful poet with a brilliant knack for refashioning the rhetoric of disposable media into lines which convey an extraordinary energy; but the true purpose of these poems is moral. We are shown the ugliness of our culture. In some places the ugliness is replicated within the poems, but what we also get is some of the sharpest satire and most inventive writing you will find in any book published this year. This is not a melancholic book of disappointed patriotism, lamenting what has happened to our country; it is an outpouring of disgust at the people we have become. Brilliant and horrible in equal...