In Gregory Leadbetter’s second poetry collection, Maskwork, ideas of mystery, the supernatural, theatre and ritual combine to reveal much more than they disguise. Masks, in these perceptive, resonant poems, act as a way of becoming, seeing, and knowing – permission to enter altered states and otherworlds, to mysteries hidden within and beyond ourselves, to experiences that call to and quicken powers of life and being. The spirit of revival, renaissance, new birth and rebirth haunts this book: and at its core, the idea of poetry itself as a form of learning – an art and a mystery – runs line a quicksilver thread throughout, between the elusive and the certain. Leadbetter’s meticulously attuned lyrical poetry tells of the transformative experience of knowing: a dynamic state of being and becoming that alters both the knower and the known, that transforms the shape of everything to come.
