In The Alexandra Sequence John Redmond views contemporary urban life through the suggestive prism of the mummers’ play, a seasonal British folk-theatre staged in the streets and door-to-door. The book takes its title from an area of Liverpool, a city shaped by its recent history of trade and migration, still recovering after a long period of decline. Experiences of uprootedness and social precarity frame suburban lives that are ‘livid with accident’. Drawing on the two central themes of the mummers’ play – combat and resurrection – the poems reveal both dark and light parallels between the modern-day neighbourhood and medieval theatre: the carnivalesque zombie-drummers marching through a local park find their mirror-image in the daily disguises of life in a housing estate, or in the masked infractions of the 2011 England Riots. Mixing narrative and lyric, Redmond paints a neighbourhood of lively, unlikely references, from Juvenal to Tommy Cooper, Brueghel to indie rock. // ‘Ingenious, maverick, brilliantly protean – welcome to the quicksilver world of John Redmond’s new collection.’ (David Morley)
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John Redmond was born and brought up in Dublin. After taking a doctorate in contemporary poetry at the University of Oxford, he spent two years teaching at Macalester College in Minnesota. He was associated for some time with the poetry magazine Thumbscrew, and has reviewed poetry for the LRB, the TLS, the Irish Times, and the Guardian. He was twice runner-up in the Irish Chess Championship. Currently, he teaches in the English Department at the University of Liverpool.
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