Great Regulars: Adam O'Riordan opens In the Flesh with

a page-long poem called, simply, "Manchester". As well he might: this is his first collection, and Manchester is the city of his birth. But rather than describing the city in 2010, or even in 1982, when he made his entrance into it, he fishes back through time to the moment of Manchester's pomp, when it stood as the world's first bona fide industrial boom town. "Queen of the cotton cities", he addresses it magniloquently in the opening line, "nightly I piece you back into existence"--and goes on to do just that, through succulent descriptions of the "frayed bridal train" of factory chimneys; the "warped applause-track of Victorian rain" that wets the miry streets.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: In the Flesh by Adam O'Riordan

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