Description
The new collection by the winner of the 2016 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry
Material Properties asks what it might mean to interpret and translate wildness into human language and human understanding. The book is a multi-faceted and vital exploration of the non-human, the elemental and the borders between existences. Through poems of parenthood at a time of environmental emergency, and poetic versions of Old English riddles in which animals, objects and natural phenomena speak, the book poses essential questions about our relationship with the living world and with each other.
[Jackself] ‘is a firework of a book, inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling’ T.S. Eliot Prize judgesJacob Polley was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. He is the author of four acclaimed books of poems, The Brink (2003), Little Gods (2006), The Havocs (2012) and Jackself (TS Eliot Prize, 2016) all published by Picador, UK. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002, and both The Brink and The Havocs were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. His collection Jackself won the 2016 TS Eliot Prize. His first novel, Talk of the Town, a fiercely demotic and funny coming-of-age murder mystery, won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award. He teaches at the University of Newcastle where he lives.
