The Martian's Regress

(Paperback)

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The new poetry collection from the winner of the Costa Poetry Award **SHORTLISTED FOR THE TS ELIOT PRIZE 2020** From the winner of the Costa Poetry Award A lone martian returns to Earth. He leaves behind him a hardened survivalist culture, its muddled myths and songs, its continued abuse of the environment that sustains it. During this journey back to the now-broken and long-abandoned mother planet, the martian begins to consider his own uncertain origins, and his own future. Cut off from his people, the martian's story is that of the individual- his duty at odds with his desire; the race of which he's still a part playing always on his mind, as well as the race that once was. This is the story of what life becomes when stripped of all that makes it worth living - of what humans become when they lose their humanity. The Martian's Regress is a brilliant, provocative, often darkly comic work that explores what a fragile environment eventually makes of those who persist in tampering with it.

Reviews

A rippling, impeccable lyricism thats delicious to read aloud, and a down-to-earth, deadpan violence that recalls Simon Armitage If you havent discovered Morgan, this weird, unsettling trip is the perfect introduction. -- Tristram Fane Saunders * Daily Telegraph *Poetry Book of the Month* *
Startling... What it does exceptionally well is make clear what ecological catastrophe might feel like as well as look like... What a joy to read and re-read and re-read. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday *
[J. O. Morgan] has quietly established himself as a gifted writer of the long poem... The Martians Regress is an imaginative leap In portraying the variously hopeful, hopeless, comic and bleak ways of apparent aliens, Morgan brings us closer to ourselves. -- Ben Wilkinson * Guardian *
The Martians Regress is a powerful long poem An interesting and always accessible variation on a dystopian theme The story remains taut and reverberates[and] draws elements of humour even from dark places. * Bookmunch *

Author Bio

J. O. Morgan lives in Scotland. He is the author of six previous books, each a single, book-length poem. His last work, Assurances (2018), won the Costa Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Natural Mechanical (2009) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His 2016 work, Interference Pattern, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.