A Formula for Night ─ New and Selected Poems

Tamar Yoseloff’s A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems from Seren includes dazzling new work as well as selections from her print collections and pieces from collaborations with artists. The title poem was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery for their 2013 exhibition Light Show and is based on an installation by the Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans a meditation on the space between heaven and earth. The poems in this collection are also concerned with heavenly presences, as well as evil spirits, explorations of light and dark. As well as the title piece, many other poems are informed by the work of visual artists, such as David Harker, Alison Gill, Susan Collis and Fred Sandback. The book also includes some poems from Formerly, a chapbook published in 2012 which included photographs by Vici MacDonald. The Formerly project was shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry.

Tamar Yoseloff is the author of four collections, including Sweetheart, a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and the winner of the Jerwood / Aldeburgh Festival Prize. Her most recent collections are The City with Horns (Salt, 2011) and Formerly, a chapbook incorporating photographs by Vici MacDonald (Hercules Editions, 2012); Formerly was shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. She is also the author of two collaborative editions with the artist Linda Karshan (Marks, Pratt Contemporary Editions, 2007 and Desire Paths, Gallerie Hein Elferink, 2012) and the editor of A Room to Live In: A Kettle's Yard Anthology. Yoseloff also acted as editor for two magazines she was Reviews Editor for Poetry London from 1995 to 1997 and Poetry Editor for Art World from 2007 to 2009. In both capacities, she commissioned new poems and critical pieces from established poets. She lives in London, where she is a freelance tutor in creative writing. She has run a number of site-specific writing workshops in venues such as the Hayward Gallery, the Royal Academy, Kettle’s Yard, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Tate St Ives, and the Foundling Museum and explores the intersection between poetry and visual art on her blog Invective Against Swans: http://invectiveagainstswans.tumblr.com/ Her work has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Financial Times, PN Review, Poetry Review, New Welsh Review, London Magazine and Ambit. Her poems have also been featured in major anthologies including Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins, 2012) Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, 2010), Women’s Work (Seren, 2009), The Captain’s Tower (Seren, 2011) and Newspaper Taxis (Seren, 2013) and in the Forward Book of Poetry and New Writing (British Council).