Having received praise for his recent work 'Human Archaeology' - "a compelling exploration of the meaning of memory and history", "an interesting, special form of poetic plate-spinning" - Ian Gouge's latest book is a shift into new territory. "After The Rehearsals" is a prose poem narrative in which the poems - although they stand on their own - are akin to chapters in a work of fiction. Reading them sequentially draws the reader into the lives of the book's characters. Writing in this way, we get to the essence behind the narrative much more readily, and uncover a story told through a composite of sharp and memorable images.
