Dad, Remember You Are Dead
ISBN: 978-1-911027-73-7
Price £9.99
Publication date:26th Sept 2019
Format: Paperback
Extent: 80 pp
About the Book:
Jacqueline Saphra will follow her critically acclaimed, T. S. Eliot Prize shortlisted All My Mad Mothers (2017) with Dad, Remember You Are Dead, a sister volume to her previous collection, taking on the canon in an examination of fatherhood and daughterhood within a wider context.
Praise for Dad, Remember You Are Dead
'The purifying and cathartic fire of anger gives astonishing power to these poems as Saphra evokes her father with mordant wit and well-judged venomous analysis. To gain the distance necessary to write such visceral poems as these takes stamina and poetic intelligence; there is a superb use of form throughout, forging a conduit for emotions so raw, taut and explosive that the book might shatter into fragments without form’s stern control over this primal material.’ – Penelope Shuttle
‘Jacqueline Saphra’s Dad, Remember You Are Dead possesses the technical daring of Sharon Olds’ Stag’s Leap and the acerbic panache of Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose. The world presented by Saphra is entirely her own, held together (sometimes blown apart!) by its Doctor Seussian rhythms, comic-strip diction, and the lushly alert textures of its ballads and sonnets. This is a very special and powerful poetry book.’ - David Morley, winner of the Ted Hughes Award
“This collection is completely and utterly astonishing. I've never read something which carries such force and power, expressed with such rhythm, immediacy and precision. It shoots the reader right into the dark heart of rage. The poems emerge fully formed, thrown like knives, with exquisite exactness. Alive with detail, these lines writhe with loathing, grief and terror. A brilliant and career-best work, written with blazing honesty and consummate skill.” – Bidisha