Synopsis
If the starting point for a number of poems in Ian Duhig's richly varied new collection is Sterne's Tristram Shandy, its presiding genius is the great eighteenth-century civil engineer, fiddler and polymath Blind Jack Metcalf - whose life Duhig here celebrates, and from whose example he draws great inspiration. Writing with an almost Burnsian eclecticism, Duhig explores urban poverty, determinism,...
Details
11 February 201680 pages
9781509809813Imprint: Picador
Reviews
An undoubtedly stimulating, thoroughly entertaining collection. . .one of Duhig's charms is that, for all his learning, he retains humilityKathryn Gray, Magma Review
Ian is a one-off, a true original. In The Blind Roadmaker he charts the journeys of 18th century blind Jack Metcalf who learned to read by feeling headstones faces as well as those of today’s dispossessed with a hat’s off empathy, wit and intelligenceJackie Kay, Herald
