Then Spree

Nia Davies's poems are sharply attentive to the realm of the 'inner ear', a meeting point of external and internal environments. The lines have their own intense music, but instead of approaching song's recognition and resolution they push towards the unfamiliar. Archaeologies and soundscapes are carefully excavated in language that sparks at every turn, while multiple directions open for the reader and 'choice is a parallelogram / best made on the slant.' -- Zoe Skoulding Nia Davies writes rich and adventurous poems. Her work feels borderless, influenced by experimental American and eastern European poetries. In the event that an 'I' surfaces in her work, it is defiantly plastic and multivalent. -- Dai George These are poems of great subtlety and beauty. Alert, quick and ancient, they are shot through with a canny kind of brilliance. -- Jay Griffiths, author of Wild: An Elemental Journey

Intensely musical with daring use of image and idea, this debut introduces a poet charting her own path through language.

The poems in Then spree take language for a ride bare-backed through fringe-worlds: through the backwoods of forgotten histories to the watery edges of landmasses, from the sunken, frayed psyche of a man living underwater to the wild spree of a meandering imagination. This debut introduces a poet devoted to the wayward call of music and always prepared to risk terror for the rewards of song, love and insight.