Ella Frears: Shine, Darling, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

A Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry

Updated edition, with a new poem and dazzling new essay on poetry and process

Ella Frears's debut is a collection of wry, vivid poems whose power lies in their intimacy. These poems are as insistent as they are circumspect, drawing close to the reader's ear and bringing them into confidence. The engine of Shine, Darling is one of strength, of fortitude in confronting and surviving the world, of a lifted-chin audacity - 'There was pain,' the speaker allows, 'but it was not new pain.'

Frears's work is world-weathered rather than world-weary, delighted by service stations, fucking on bins in Cornwall, in constant communion with the moon. Her poetry lives for the power-play of people, the pull of the sea, the smoky air - 'Stormy, sticky with flies' - and tangled underbrush where the land ends. Her characters test each other, experimenting with the boundaries of physical violence, of punishment, of traps, all the while drawing the reader into a complicity that gives these poems all their daring, electrifying muscularity.

In Shine, Darling, the desire to expose and disclose wrestles with defence and defiance. The result is exhilarating, a 'glorious full-bodied' debut collection with the draw of an adamant tide.

'This poet is a bit special. She's exciting, a bit scary and sort of brilliant' Frank Skinner

'She writes with such fecundity and truth I think I shapeshifted' Andrea Arnold

'Shine, Darling is a startling debut, as provocative as it is playful and tender . . . These poems are uncompromising and intelligent, fresh and newly disruptive' Mona Arshi

'Frears's poems are places of feverishness, extra-sensitivity, and suggestion . . . They lightly take your pulse, then ask why it's accelerating' Jack Underwood

'Luminous poems' Kate Simpson, Telegraph