The Brink

Jacob Polley

2004 Nominee

T. S. Eliot Prize

2005 Nominee

Forward Prize for Poetry Best First Collection

05 December 2003
9780330412889
64 pages

Synopsis

Though still in his mid-twenties Jacob Polley is already in possession of a remarkably mature talent. Formally graceful, but unself-conscious, his poems come at the reader from all angles, wholly alive to the unique possibilities of their subjects - the sea, the land, the home, the very brink of things.

This debut collection gives us the first opportunity to see his transforming imagination in action, where a jar of honey becomes '... the sun, all flesh and no bones / but for the floating knuckle / of the honeycomb / attesting to the nature of the struggle'.