Jake Hawkey – But & Though

Description

The characters that live and breathe in Jake Hawkey’s impressive debut poetry collection are playful and spiritual, often both defensive and desperately vulnerable. Taking its title from the language of addiction, with its circles of prevarication and excuse, But & Though leads us on a boy’s journey through a childhood overshadowed by parental alcoholism.

These are poems on the move in the tapestry of London life – from the hospital ward to the back rows of the bus – where the desire for escape is also, paradoxically, a ‘Herculean search for home’. But & Though is a testament to the kinship ties that bind us together, however fraught they become, and a celebration of the working-class identity that defines the poet’s native south London. With a voice as spiky and irreverent as it is gentle, Jake Hawkey is a refreshing new talent in English poetry.

About the Author

Jake Hawkey was born in 1990 and grew up in Woolwich. He studied Fine Art at the University of Westminster and holds an MA in Poetry from Queen’s University, Belfast. His moving and hard-hitting collection grew out of an investigation into addiction within families for his PhD research, informed by his own experience of south London’s socio-political class dynamics. Hawkey’s poems are published in several journals and anthologies, including Hold Open the Door (UCD, 2020), The Honest Ulsterman and Proletarian Poetry. He has had sculpture works commissioned and has read his poems internationally, including on Beale Street, Tennessee, and at L’Abri Fellowship, Massachusetts. He was selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series in 2020. His chapbook Breeze Block appeared from Lumpen/The Class Work Project in 2020. But & Though is his debut collection.