RENDANG
A poetic exploration of identity and cultural landscapes
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Granta Books
Published:6th Feb '20
Should be back in stock very soon
This debut poetry collection offers a profound exploration of identity, culture, and memory. RENDANG invites readers on a unique journey through contemporary landscapes.
In RENDANG, a remarkable debut collection by Will Harris, the author delves into the intricate tapestry of race, culture, memory, and identity. This collection serves as a reflection on contemporary issues, showcasing Harris's ability to weave personal narratives with broader societal themes. The work has garnered significant acclaim, winning the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and earning a spot on the shortlist for the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2020.
The poetic journey in RENDANG is both radical and surreal, transporting readers from the lush landscapes of West Sumatra to the imaginative realms of Planet Mongo, with stops along Gray's Inn Road. Harris employs vivid imagery and complex language to explore Indonesian artifacts, gentrification, and the essence of citizenry. Each poem acts as a lens through which the reader can examine the multifaceted nature of identity in today's world.
Through a playful yet masterful command of form, Will Harris creates a body of work that resonates deeply with the ambivalences and challenges of contemporary life. RENDANG is not merely a collection of poems; it is an urgent commentary on what it means to exist in a world rich with history, culture, and the myriad experiences that shape who we are. This collection is a love letter to the places and memories that define us, inviting readers to reflect on their own identities and connections to the world around them.
Graceful and, at times, devastating -- Books of the Year * Observer *
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, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize
Harris's poems turn the utterance back to ourselves, opening a dialogue between us, our modernity, the depth of our loss and the weight of our remembering. Where epithets rend memory from the moment, the artefacts of wounds heal themselves through a weft of irony, weaving language into a hard-earned scar -- Sandeep Parmar
The best... With withering sleight of hand, Harris takes facile expectations of poets of colour and gleefully turns them inside out... These poems are disquisitions on the labour of poet-making, the delicate task of constructing a persona both on and off the page in a culture market currently inclined to reduce you to your ethno-cultural background... RENDANG is a wonder, and we are lucky to have it' * Poetry London *
RENDANG offers sonorous, capacious, porous poetics. This is poetry that sings * DURA *
Harris's witty and eloquent debut won the Felix Dennis Prize for best first collection, and is shortlisted for the TS Eliot award. The scenes he draws, from dreams and real life, are captivating and inhabit a broad range of forms between which this young poet moves with grace -- Books of the Year * Financial Times *
Sets the standard for modern poetry * Lit Hub *
Harris writes with a piercing clarity and intelligence, his voice warm as it crisply ruminates on big issues such as our shared cultures and identities, as well as more intimate moments * Guardian *
There isn't a single poem in this collection that isn't cut through with sardonic humour and an absolutely unique, sideways-glancing tone * Poetry Review *
ISBN: 9781783785599
Dimensions: 200mm x 130mm x 8mm
Weight: 135g
80 pages