'Keith Armstrong is, as one of the poems attests,
“both happy and sad”. He occupies that tormented space
where most politicised optimists live;a land where
hope and defeat, love and hate, beauty and pain
co-exist relentlessly in an uneasy marriage.The poems
read like postcards from an alternative grand tour,
journal entries from another, more innocent, time,
when the world spun more slowly and we had time to
befriend strangers and notice things. There are echoes
of Baudelaire, of Brecht, Byron and Shelley in some of
the poems. Sometimes nostalgic, poignant reflections
on love, friendship and identity; sometimes the lament
of the defeated. Other times, poems drip with the
bellicose pride of the Jingling Geordie, ringing out
like a challenge. This collection paints Armstrong as
the maturing internationalist leafing through a cache
of dusty photographs, celebrating people and places, a
world of anecdote and adventure,strong drink and life
itself. More importantly though, many of the poems in
Imagined Corners reveal him as a subtle observer of
beauty whether he chooses to do so from the position
of global citizen, mourner, lover, friend or son.'
(Paul Summers, Dream Catcher).
