Books by John Muckle

'Firewriting' is John Muckle's first collection of poems, following two collections of short fiction. The book revolves around the long title poem, an extraordinary conceit which imagines that Walter Benjamin survived and lived to an advanced age. This and the supporting poems demonstrate the author's narrative skills.

In stories varying from a funeral eulogy to a compelling wartime romance, Late Driver tells of a number of surprising lives imagined in out of the way places; the mood is restless, probing, suffused with memories and loss - although some rivet-hole stars still let in the light of the young women who first punched them into an empty sky.

This exciting and readable book presents the fifties and sixties as a crucible of new departures, asking what remains and continues from those decades into the cultural present. It takes the form of a series of thematic essays each of which discusses the work of an individual or group of novelists.