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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of the

Spectator and I'm very pleased indeed this week to be welcoming Armando Inutio as my guest.

Armando we know you all as a screenwriter, a journalist, a producer of Hollywood films,

the creative out and partridge and all the rest.

But he appears before us today as a poet, the author of a new book called Pandemonium,

Some Verses on the Current Predicament.

Amando, welcome. Hello. Now, I'm sometimes

to do this when I'm interviewing people about poetry is, can I ask you to read a little bit

so people can get a flavour of it if you have a copy of the book to hand? Just a few lines,

because it's its own thing, you know. Yes. Okay. What shall I read?

Let me see.

Well, here's a section where Boris, well, I'll explain who Boris is because he's not quite who you might think.

But the earthly figure we call in this poem, Boris, has asked his accomplice Matt to try and help him out from the predicament by going

to get some friends involved. So this passage here describes how Matt goes down into a kind of strange

region where he speaks to his circle of friends. Okay, here we go.

How can I describe with in perfect tongue that sewer of rank and rabid fervour

the circle of friends who lay writhing flanks and limbs entangled

like a clump of worms gathered by a fisherman and placed in ready bucket for his line. So these friends

coagulated round themselves, each one bait for another, bait upon bait, knowing one another and

each one known till they knew themselves inside out, arses eaten by faces, feces dropped on eyes,

arms reaching into guts, lips retching hands out whole,

...