Misadventure won the inaugural Picador Poetry Prize, and is Richard Meier’s first collection. Misadventure is a book about what we learn, and what we refuse to learn: although Meier’s poems are often deceptively quiet in their address, the reader will soon discover a poet capable of illuminating the darkest corners of our lives by the very lightest of touches, and an ear simultaneously attuned to the lyric poem and the cadence of real speech. The collection also contains some disarmingly tender poetry on the experience of fatherhood. Misadventure is about all the hope and hopelessness lurking just below the surface of things, in our rooms, tables, coats and gardens – and leaves them enriched and strange, under the transforming eye of a fine new talent.

Richard Meier was born in Surrey in 1970. He holds both a music degree and an MA in psychoanalytic studies, and now works in mental health policy. He lives in north London with his wife and daughter. Misadventure is his first book.