There were so many incredible books this year. I’ve stuck to poetry: my favourite collection of 2023 was Andrew Wynn Owen’s Infinite in Finite for its combination of technical adeptness and emotional heft. It is a joy.
I also loved Declan Ryan’s debut collection and Maggie Wang’s debut pamphlet, both distinguished by economy of words and eye for compelling detail. Hannah Sullivan’s Was it for this somehow managed to be an advance on her T.S. Eliot-prizewinning Three Poems (and its long poem about the Grenfell tragedy, ‘Tenants’, was my single favourite poem I read in 2023). Abigail Perry continues to write about anything she turns her eye on with cheerily nonchalant sprezzatura; Judy Brown’s third collection is intricate and tautly-woven. And Rebecca Goss and Emily Hasler are writing some of the best poetry of place going at the moment, about Suffolk and Essex respectively – all of these collections (and many others) come strongly recommended.
From the publisher:
Infinite in Finite develops the inimitable style of The Multiverse, the author's first collection (2018), praised as showing 'some of the best technical skills of any living poet', the work of 'one who is not afraid of big subjects, whose…
From the publisher:
Hannah Sullivan’s first collection, Three Poems, won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the inaugural John Pollard International Poetry Prize. Was It for This continues that book’s project, offering a trenchant exploration…
From the publisher:
Rebecca Goss' fourth and most ambitious collection, Latch, is a study in the act of returning. It is about reconnecting to a place, Suffolk, and understanding what it once held, and what it now holds for a woman and her family. These poems…
From the publisher:
Situated where salt and freshwater meet, where floods and fields 'mingle parts', Emily Hasler's second collection exposes the dailiness of disaster to chart the constantly shifting courses of rivers and lives.Taking its name from the…
From the publisher:
Maggie Wang’s debut poetry pamphlet, The Sun on the Tip of a Snail’s Shell takes its inspiration from the sixth mass extinction—an event encompassing destruction of colossal proportions and thoroughly entangled with what…
From the publisher:
Lairs brings together something primal and secret – the lair as haven for a wild or feral animal – with the poem framed as a mathematical equation. In these terms, the ‘lair’ is a kind of nest, a beautiful…
From the publisher:
‘Elegant and heartaching, these poems illuminate the sorrows of life with a bright flame, returning us to that miraculous human capacity for love and faith even in our darkest days.’ Liz Berry‘Declan Ryan reveals…
From the publisher:
Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023I Think We’re Alone Now was supposed to be a book about intimacy: what it might look like in solitude, in partnership, and in terms of collective responsibility. Instead, the poems…
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