Rendang
Publisher:
Other
Publication:
2/2020
Languages:
English
Binding:
Paperback
ISBN/SKU:
9781783785599
Pages:
0
Sizes:
0 x 0mm
Weight:
0.5000
On OrderTo be dispatched within 1 week
£10.99
£10.99
(€12.31)
WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION
Shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry 2020
In RENDANG, Will Harris complicates and experiments with the lyric in a way that urges it forward. With an unflinching yet generous eye, RENDANG is a collection that engages equally with the pain and promise of self-perception. Drawing on his Anglo-Indonesian heritage, Harris shows us new ways to think about the contradictions of identity and cultural memory. He creates companions that speak to us in multiple languages; they sit next to us on the bus, walk with us through the crowd and talk to us while we're chopping shallots. They deftly ask us to consider how and what we look at, as well as what we don't look at and why.
Playing eruditely with and querying structures of narrative, with his use of the long poem, images, ekphrasis, and ruptured forms, RENDANG is a startling new take on the self, and how an identity is constructed. It is intellectual and accessible, moving and experimental, and combines a linguistic innovation with a deep emotional rooting.
'Will Harris takes British poetry into new waters: RENDANG is an astonishing debut. These questing poems rend and render, they tear and they give. Slipping between the everyday and the unreal, between crystalline lyric and a roving, essayistic expansiveness, their shapeshifting delves into the self and its precarious foundations... Many are heart-stopping: the kind of poem that makes you put down the book for a while just to breathe'
- Sarah Howe, author of the T.S. Eliot Prize winning Loop of Jade
Shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry 2020
In RENDANG, Will Harris complicates and experiments with the lyric in a way that urges it forward. With an unflinching yet generous eye, RENDANG is a collection that engages equally with the pain and promise of self-perception. Drawing on his Anglo-Indonesian heritage, Harris shows us new ways to think about the contradictions of identity and cultural memory. He creates companions that speak to us in multiple languages; they sit next to us on the bus, walk with us through the crowd and talk to us while we're chopping shallots. They deftly ask us to consider how and what we look at, as well as what we don't look at and why.
Playing eruditely with and querying structures of narrative, with his use of the long poem, images, ekphrasis, and ruptured forms, RENDANG is a startling new take on the self, and how an identity is constructed. It is intellectual and accessible, moving and experimental, and combines a linguistic innovation with a deep emotional rooting.
'Will Harris takes British poetry into new waters: RENDANG is an astonishing debut. These questing poems rend and render, they tear and they give. Slipping between the everyday and the unreal, between crystalline lyric and a roving, essayistic expansiveness, their shapeshifting delves into the self and its precarious foundations... Many are heart-stopping: the kind of poem that makes you put down the book for a while just to breathe'
- Sarah Howe, author of the T.S. Eliot Prize winning Loop of Jade