A heady and hefty selection of the best poems from eighteen previously published books and chapbooks, namely Cry Curries, In Praise of Ridicule, More Than a Feline, The Gloomy Seahorse, Carrying Women Across Rivers, The Meandering Knight, Vampires with Fairy Wings, Weirdly Out West, My Rabbit’s Shadow Looks Like a Hand, Bunny Queue, Get a Room, Robot Poems, Yee-Haw, The Knight of Whatever, Flunkey Monkey, The Jazz Hands Pterodactyl, Lovecraft’s Chin and Aardvarks: Earth Pig Poetry. Mostly lighthearted verse, ironic, sardonic and laterally inclined, occasionally serious, always offbeat, absurdism combined with optimism, wordplay with philosophical speculation. Poetry inspired by Richard Brautigan, Ogden Nash, Ivor Cutler, Roger McGough, Edward Lear, Hilaire Belloc, Spike Milligan, with an infrequent nod to Cavafy, Lorca, Pessoa. Socks might not be so strange in the grand scheme of things, but they should always be odd.“If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.” — SAMUEL R. DELANY
“Rhys Hughes puts a big red rubber nose on language.” — MAITHREYI KARNOOR
“If Hughes ever stops writing I will shoot him.” — JEFF VANDERMEER
“Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet’s literature. He makes the metaphysical political, the personal incredible and the comic hints at subtle pain.” — MICHAEL MOORCOCK
