How Chet Baker Died

• About the book

The first words in Barry Gifford's new poetry collection say it all - 'Here I am wasting time again / writing poems to keep myself company' - doing what he has ever done, surprising his readers in kaleidoscopic prisms of colour, turning every breath into a story, and himself into his most colourful character. In a strange way, Barry Gifford's poems tell a wordless story, freed of the writer's art. As he attests: 'I prefer music to poems, words don't / live the same way - so, listen.'