50 Heads (2007)

Written during 2006 in Venice, Cologne, Reykjavik, Tokyo, Edinburgh and Manchester, 50 Heads is a suite of 49 poems each of which can stand alone, but read together are a single larger work; recurring themes handed from one poem to the next compose images and ideas in the way a musical score resonates in a listener’s memory. The missing 50th Head is the writer or the reader.

Tony_TrehyUniquely, Tony Trehy has developed an international reputation as a poet and text artist alongside his work as an innovative curator. To date he has published 5 books of poetry in the UK and abroad, plus poetic essays and text-art theory. His work is also included in various published and online anthologies. His performance style is entertaining and friendly while his writing is rigorous and often challenging.

“One might say that, just as William Carlos Williams brought ‘American speech’ into the long tradition of ‘making’ poetry in English/American literary usage/language, so Tony Trehy has introduced the lingo/thinking (‘style’) of mathematics into the ‘poem-containing-history’ – well emboldened by passionate, personal knowledges of his own” — Robert Grenier

Originally published in 2007 by Manchester’s Apple Pie Editions, Tony Trehy’s 50 heads is now available as a PDF: trehy_50_heads_2006