While the place and year of Steve Malmude’s birth (Manhattan, 1940) nominally stamp him as a second-generation poet of the New York School, his hieratic, almost ideogrammatic poems, made slowly and carefully – sometimes over many years – are utterly distinct from those of his peers. With substantial selections from his books – all but ten of Malmude’s previously published poems are included here – Red Carpet also gathers unpublished early work (the opening sonnet was written in 1958, when Malmude’s guiding star was Robert Lowell) along with poems written after he relocated to Limerick, Maine, in 2002.

‘Of the many generations of the New York School, only two of its practitioners developed an identifiable and unique sense of line: James Schuyler and Steve Malmude. Malmude, carpenter turned lifeguard, lacked the Upper East Side coat-and-tails look of the cocktails at the museum crowd, and a careless reader might mistake his line for Robert Creeley’s coughing twists. Malmude breathes more easily and has a confidence that dazzles precisely because it is so quiet. It’s the verbal equivalent of dawn in Central Park before the homeless awaken and the compulsive lace up their Nikes. Just ducks floating on the water, the sun not yet above the mist. The red carpet is long overdue.’ — Ron Silliman

Steve Malmude was born in Manhattan in 1940. He has published three books and two pamphlets of poems. He lives with his wife, Christine, in Limerick, Maine.

Miles Champion was born in Nottingham in 1968. He lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn, New York.