The Animal Library marks the debut of a remarkable poet a poet of the flesh, his own and that of the animals he has lived with all his life, whether real or imaginary. Jason Camlots father was a furrier and he grew up in a world where, inevitably, baby fur gets in your eyes or in your mouth. In dreams, the poet becomes a whale corpse washed up/ on a very pale beach/ and hundreds of flies came,/ and people,/ to see the tusk,/ spun like coral glass. And as the boy grows up, images, at once curiously literal and yet surreal images of being devoured or skinned alive - stay with him. The beauty of this collection is one of the mot juste, a concreteness and precision, coupled with a superb sense of rhythm.
