Slide

- Blurb -

The first collection from award-winning poet Mark Pajak' Fresh, urgent, alive. . . genius. ' Patience AgbabiThis assured and arresting first collection moves deftly and with purpose into private, hidden places - a locked shed, the dark of a battery farm, a murky riverbed, a late-night bar - to show, unflinchingly and in cinematic detail, what we might otherwise choose not to see. Sight is both a gift and curse, of course- given or taken away in poems of windows and curtains, torches and blindfolds, and yet here - following in the tradition of Oswald and Heaney - each image is freshly minted through a cool, objective eye. Every poem seeks to inhabit those seemingly small but pivotal moments which have monumental, sometimes mortal, consequences. For Pajak, time is fluid- a blink can be ' slow as an eclipse' , our lifetimes are fleeting, our deaths often lingering and seldom peaceful or painless. Vivid and visceral, steadily examining violence, sexual encounters, childhood and ageing (a dying grandmother' s ' slow pink eyelids, those quick teaspoon breaths' ), cars and cities, and Nature - full of wonder and threat - Slide is always asking pertinent questions- illuminating brutality, frailty and tenderness, the responsibility of those who witness - whether voyeur, bystander or reader. This is a charged, beautifully observed and thrilling debut.