With 14 monotypes by the author.
Published 2021. Paperback, 78pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848617063 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

On a remote forest farm in northern Sweden, the static of Lars Ruth’s unsettled mind is fizzing. Voices. Sightings. Encounters, real and imagined, hint at a fractured and fragmentary life. Something is falling apart – something coming together.
The Invention of Lars Ruth is an intimate, visionary exploration of psychic disquiet. Its themes, of remembrance and aloneness, spiral around an evasive, haunting figure. But who is Lars? His voice is the echo to a volatile mind, aware of its disintegration, fearful of imminent collapse. Only by re-imagining his place in the natural world and the mysterious creatures in it, can Lars Ruth secure his newly awakening self.

George Messo’s fifth book of poems is a richly inventive, candid reflection on the individual nature of mental distress; a darkly playful, bold new collection from one of Shearsman’s most reticent poets.

“ The Invention of Lars Ruth is a series of stark and beautiful visions of what is perhaps finally an unnameable mortal reality, of ‘all the breathing creatures’, outside oneself and written in hope of reformation. It is a poetry of imaginative and exact figuration which exemplifies Messo’s unique achievements.” – Kelvin Corcoran

“Those of us who have read George Messo’s work for years will know the calm lucidity with which he writes of profound fear and mystery, the wit and imagination with which he negotiates a kind of holy silence. The Invention of Lars Ruth hits all of those notes whilst also being something new – an elegy quite unlike anything I’ve encountered before in its poignant, uncompromising honesty and reach. These are poems ‘going home / going deeper’ in every perfectly balanced line; and how easy it is to tune in to its frequency and get swept, gratefully, along.”- Luke Kennard

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