Isn't Forever

By Amy Key

Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice. Amy Key’s Isn’t Forever is a grimoire for feminine selfhood in a world where a sense of self is flimsy, elusive and unrequited. The poems in this book are obsessive in their desire to construct and breach the terms of their own intimacy. They have their own ‘narrative costume’ but are vexed with it, not quite able to master the ‘diligence of having a body’. This is a book where a tender and sabotaging shame of aloneness has taken root. Where wants cluster and are at war with each other. Where the heart is at once ‘all lurgy’ and an investment piece to be saved for best. Where the sea is the only solace, but the sea is blasé. The ‘ta-dah!’ and candour of these poems is an exercise in Amy Key’s imaginative protection and urge for personal extravaganza, an attempt to acknowledge but fight back the brutal inner voice. The obscure audience of the reader is never out of sight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Jun 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781780371740

Amy Key

Amy Key’s second poetry collection, Isn’t Forever, a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice, was published by Bloodaxe in June 2018 and was named a book of the year in the Guardian, The Times and the Irish Times. Her poems have been widely published in magazines including Granta, The White Review, Poetry, The Poetry Review, Poetry London and Broadly, and in anthologies f rom Faber & Faber, Penguin and Ignota Books. She is currently writing a hybrid work of creative non-fiction and poetry.