Askew

Following his acclaimed exploration of disability in Human Looking, the poems in Andy Jackson's new collection Askew widen the lens, to feel their way into the impairments of our ecologies and our dialogues. How might our world itself be disabled? How can we live together within this reality?

These poems use an array of established and invented forms – sonnet, pantoum, erasure, prose poem, ghazal, cento and more – turning them to unusual effect under the pressure of our collective grief and bewilderment. They face the extinction and climate crises, the distortions of social-media division, the fracturing of solidarity in the wake of the Covid pandemic, and the problems of masculinity, with undaunted tenderness. They express, with an extraordinary intensity, the sense of vulnerability, both as human, and as poetic value.

Engaging in aslant conversation with musicians and composers, poets and artists, while reckoning with historical and contemporary thinkers, this is poetry that affirms the value of collaboration and interdependence, with all of its promise and difficulty.