The Independent on Sunday recently reproduced Jeremy Reed's poem Sites, taken from his latest collection Patron Saint of Eyeliner, as part of their Sunday Poem series. His latest work of non-fiction Caligula, co-authored with Stephen Barber, has just been published.

On Jeremy Reed: 'A cross between Rimbaud with a PC, Max Ernst and Helmut Newton...the most imaginative writer today.' - J.G.Ballard 'Reed is an elegant stylist whose devotion to excess carries the reader along as he stunningly evokes life on the edge.' - Publishers Weekly Click here for more...

Jeremy Reed was born in Jersey, Channel Islands. Acknowledged as one of Britain's foremost poets, he has been described by Katherine Raine as "the most imaginatively gifted poet since Dylan Thomas."

Between 1984 and 1990 he published six books with Jonathan Cape, Random House. Penguin published his Selected Poems in 1987, and he has been the recipient of major awards which include an Eric Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Poetry Society European Translation prize for his versions of Eugenio Montale's The Coastguard's House, published by Bloodaxe in 1991.

Among his recent novels is The Pleasure Chateau - described by JG Ballard as "a cross between Rimbaud with a PC, Max Ernst and Helmut Newton...the most imaginative writer today." Creation Books also publish his trilogy of popular music studies Marc Almond: The Last Star, Scott Walker: Another Tear Falls, and Brian Jones: The Last Decadent.

His latest poetry collection Patron Saint of Eyeliner which features Sites - as reproduced below - and can be ordered this month at a special discounted price. Please click on book title, then 'order this title':

Sites

A warehouse burns in solid orange flame,
erupts at Bankside, a black cumulus
of tented smoke pyramiding the Thames.

He sits and contemplates biography,
a Persian carpet rages in the sky,
voluted purples peacocked into green,>br>

a fuming skylight over Canon Street.
A city's dawn is always visionary,
he strokes atomized stardust on his skin,

as though chasing gold embers from his pores.
His studio is torched. The years go by
memoried under bridges, blued with tears,

the same trains hustling into Charing Cross,
the changes registered inside his blood.
A day is like a pick-up which won't stay

faithful to anyone, despite the need
to have it open out into a friend.
Bugloss and borage present to his eyes...

He paces memory like it's a room
in which the furniture comes clear at dawn,
a blue vase loaded with redundant dreams,

a red one choked with flowers, he clears the lot
to know the moment, catch his breath again,
and feel the city fit him like a boot.

This poem is taken from Patron Saint of Eyeliner. This eclectic collection was published by Creation Books in 2000, and is offered for this month only at the special web price of £7.50 (previously £14.95).

On Jeremy Reed

'This is one great poet - as great as the rebel peers he evokes. One of the most original virtuoso voices to be heard in the poetry of our fin-de-siecle.' - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

'Reed's poetry is full of rich and careful writing, dense with pleasure in words that pleasure the world and waken us to its lovely suprises.' - Seamus Heaney

'Authentically poetic...the sort of perception which Rimbaud would have recognised.' - Robert Nye

'The most beautiful gorgeous outrageously brilliant poetry in the universe.' - Bjork

'Brilliant and special.' - Marc Almond

'A powerful and imaginative quality to his fiction that is all his own. As much rock star as poet, I feel we often underappreciate his work in Britian.' - Gary Pulsifer, Publisher