Simon Turner’s Difficult Second Album not only fulfils all the threats and promises of his debut, You Are Here (Heaventree Press, 2007), but also rightfully sees him take his place as a true troubadour of the surreal.

Featuring his most accomplished work to date, this second collection is not in fact difficult, but rather darkly precise, quick-witted and modestly bold. Turner has an eye for infectious and joyously offbeat lines, rendering both the incongruous and beautiful in his own version and voice.

Wherever Difficult Second Album may veer, between deftly lyrical but defiantly modernist poems on nature, acidic and satirical cut-ups on world politics, or in the quiet riots of notes to self, rejection slips and mislaid manifestos, Simon Turner remains confident and foot-sure in the strangeness and abundance of it all, of what poetry both intends and is capable of. 

Praise for Simon Turner’s previous work:

“…a very accomplished and entertaining volume. Phrases are eloquently turned, and sometimes revisited to be turned inside out and upside down” 

    - Sarah Law, Stride

“Turner seeks to arrest and repay the reader’s attention, his jagged language alternating with stretches of quieter meditation. He’s not afraid of form, either: the lyrical and the concrete both take their turn throughout” 

    - Michael W. Thomas, Raw Edge

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