Shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry 2020
A visionary debut collection exploring our intimate and ecological dependencies.
When Louis Pasteur observed the process of fermentation, he noted that, while most organisms perished from lack of oxygen, some were able to thrive as 'life without air'. In this capricious, dreamlike collection, characters and scenes traverse states of airlessness, from suffocating relationships and institutions, to toxic environments and ecstatic asphyxiations.
Both compassionate and ecologically nuanced, Life Without Air bridges poetry and prose to interrogate the conditions necessary for survival.
'Whip smart, sonically gorgeous [...] These poems are as subtle and complex as the insidious relationships they illustrate. Life Without Air is the right book for our far-gone moment.'
- Rae Armantrout, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Versed
