Letters from the Takeaway, & other distances

For a brief period in the 1990s Khaled Hakim published sparingly and performed semi-improvisatory routines. This collection gathers all the work previously published. As the first-and for some time afterwards the only-black or Asian experimental poet in the UK, the work remains freakishly singular as he forged an occasional poetry that mixes narrative, theory, and stand-up. `Khaled Hakim is the great lost British experimental writer of the last quarter century. I believe that his importance ... lies in the fact that he brings a powerful and original set of ingredients to the most important kind of contemporary poetry. His film-making background and engagement with the work of Stan Brakhage changed the speed and the angle of his L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-polarized poetry. He was the only UK poet to work with David Antin's conversational poetics. His Brummie-styled phonetic writing drew parallels with the similarly individual universes of Tom Leonard and bill bissett, and his class and colour were-and still are, of course-important. The conversations that his writing and being sparked in the 1990s have never really been followed through in British poetry.' - Tim Atkins, from the Foreword to this volume