A Year in the New Life

(Paperback, Main)

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Jack Underwood's debut collection, Happiness (2015), was celebrated for its unconventional and daring tone: 'conversational, arresting . . . weird, singular' (Guardian). Such qualities are on accomplished display in this anticipated new collection, as the poems mature and move on to a wide range of preoccupations, including imminent societal collapse and current riots; the limits of masculinity and complexities of fatherhood; as well as uncanny, often amusing scenarios, such as serving drinks to a gathering of fifteen babies or group kissing in Empathy Class.

Throughout, incongruous and domestic subjects re-align in skewed lyrics and thought experiments, all presented with a generosity and tenderness that makes the poet so unmistakable - and indispensable for the strange times in which we live.

Reviews

"Jack Underwood's poems are exceptional in how they surrender to their own music, each one a kind of expertly controlled free-fall. In this tough and tender time, we need these poems of tenderness, of toughness, and of time." -- Natalie Shapero

"The glorious abundance of Jack's wayward absurdism and imagism creates intellectual plot-points felt like dreams, a way to think about logic in a different way, a way to think about things and people and life in a different way, which is the intention of poetry." -- Rachael Allen

"Jack Underwood demonstrates in A Year in the New Life that he's one of the most innovative imagists and thinkers writing in the English language." -- Anthony Anaxagorou

Author Bio

Jack Underwood's debut collection of poems, Happiness (Faber, 2015), won the Somerset Maugham Award. He is a senior lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His non-fiction book Not Even This, about parenthood, uncertainty, and poetic language and knowledge, will be published by Corsair in 2021.