Music for the Dead and Resurrected

In her book of letters to the dead, the prize-winning poet Valzhyna Mort relearns how to mourn those erased by violent history

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL GRIFFIN PRIZE
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2020

Music for the Dead and Resurrected captures the complexity of living in the shadows of imperial force, of the vulnerability of bodies, of seeing with more than the eyes.

Valzhyna Mort's work is characterised by a memorial sensibility that honours those lost to the violences of nation states. In Music for the Dead and Resurrected the poet offers us a body of work which balances political import with serious play. There are few poets writing with such an intuitive sense of the balance between arcane and contemporary currents in poetry. Mort's lines are timeless, finely honed to last beyond a single lifetime.