Published December 2014 ISBN 978-1-909404-12-0
Book, perfect bound, 72 pages. £7.95
About the Author
Neil Leadbeater was born and brought up in Wolverhampton, England. He was educated at Repton and is an English graduate from the University of London. For over 30 years he worked in various administrative posts in the NHS, first in England and then in Scotland. For many years he has lived and worked in Edinburgh and has made Scotland his home.
His many and varied interests embrace most aspects of the arts and, on winter evenings, he enjoys the challenge of getting to grips with ancient, medieval and modern languages.
Author, poet, essayist and critic, his work has been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad.
He is a member of the Federation of Writers (Scotland) and was awarded fourth place in the annual Purple Patch UK Awards 2011 for best small press poet in the UK.
He is a regular reviewer for the on-line magazine Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Engagement) (USA) and an external contributor for the UK to the Romanian journal, Orizont Literar Contemporan (Contemporary Literary Horizon) which is based in Bucharest.
His work has been translated into Romanian and Spanish.
This is Neil Leadbeater’s fifth collection of poems.
Reviews:
These poems and prose poems have the propulsion of a road movie: charming, arresting and vivid. Seemingly written off the cuff, they are actually very well crafted. Neil Leadbeater knows what he’s about. His voice is fresh and open, resonant and memorable.
David Mark Williams
The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives takes the reader on an exotic journey of four parts through both rural and urban landscapes, neatly linking the whole between the first poem–White Gold–and the last–Liquid Gold–to create a powerful sense of the experience of Brazil that Leadbeater wants to share with us.
Denni Turp
Neil has a good sense of how to use the page to get the best from the poems. There are some moments of real verbal elegance in which the poem’s tone and language come together perfectly to summon up the flora, fauna, people and places of Brazil. A very wry sense of humour is at work too. He manages to capture and communicate a sense of Brazil – as only a over of the country and its people could. Each poem stands on its own but together they offer a sharp evocation of the country. It is never a mere travelogue though, as several poems universalise the feelings prompted by the poem’s subject matter.
Patrick Lodge
