Publisher's Synopsis
Weightless Road is Vincent De Souza's much anticipated first collection of poems - several of which have won awards in high profile poetry competitions, including fourth place in the London Writers Competition 2003 judged by the Bloodaxe poets Moniza Alvi and Jo Shapcott with the poem Breathing Defect. This collection charts the growth of Vincent's style - from early days when he was reading American writers like Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs and welcoming their influence on his poems. Earlier on his favoured subjects included motorcycles and road movie journeys, childhood trauma and snapshots of life often written with the detail of a photo image. Poems like Existence of Paint, Equal Rights Talk, the Lost Biker and the title piece, Weightless Road, carry the reader into the riding thrills of the motorcycle journeyman - you can smell the engine oil, feel the heat of the crankcase and the voice is a raw, clear one, of a writer surfing acceleration, aiming for a destination tantalisingly out of sight. Over time his style branches out as his study of painters like Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí see him take more risks with the language and methods of the poems. Vincent's eye is a camera ready to allow any subject to emerge centre stage in a poem. From the brutality of macho loveless sex in Bloodstains to the anarchic urban violence and vandalism in Kicking Cars. Places and people in the poems are real and unedited, yet the language and imagery raise them into symbols of something bigger, a deeper truth. Cityscapes and the urban face of London are backdrops to the energy in many poems and Vincent's love of rock music surfaces in the Nirvana tribute of Shooting on a Moment and the Jimi Hendrix portrait of Home is Fire. If poems were home entertainment, Vincent's are adrenalin-fuelled Play Station games, if poems were musical instruments, Vincent's are a Stratocaster electric guitar and if poems were cries from the human soul, Vincent's are a rebel yell.
