Hard Drive
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Carcanet Press Ltd
Published:29th Jun '23
Should be back in stock very soon
Shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize 2024.
Shortlisted for the Gay Poetry Lammy Award 2024.
When his partner suddenly died, life changed utterly for Paul Stephenson. Hard Drive is the outcome of his revisiting a world he thought he knew, but which had been upended. In poems that are affectionate, self-examining, sometimes funny and often surprised by grief in the oddest corners, the poet takes us through rooms, routines, and rituals of bereavement, the memory of love, a shared life and separation. A noted formalist, with a flair for experiment, pattern and the use of constraints, Stephenson has written a remarkable first book, moving and, despite everything, a hopeful record of a gay relationship. It is also a landmark elegy collection.
'Hard Drive approaches the elegy through a kaleidoscopic, inventive and genuinely moving use of form... Stephenson looks death in the eyes, and holds his nerve like few others.' - Sean Hewitt; 'A brilliant and innovative formal poet, Stephenson here applies his great gifts, with heart-breaking clarity and bravery, to the most unfaceable of subjects. The result is a beautiful hymn to the human capacity for love.' - Jonathan Edwards; 'This is poetry for anyone who has ever lost someone... poetry that celebrates and mourns those deep connections that we make in life.' - Niall Campbell; 'Paul Stephenson brings all the tender mechanisms of language to sustain the weight of grief: this is an extraordinarily moving and accomplished collection.' - Penelope Shuttle
- Short-listed for The Gay Poetry Lammy Award 2024
- Short-listed for The Polari Book Prize 2024
ISBN: 9781800173279
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
132 pages