Sea Creature Regrows Entire Body

By Elaine Beckett

The title of Elaine Beckett’s debut collection suggests a process of unstoppable change. Moments of personal and global crisis are juxtaposed, and examined from different perspectives so that her poems reveal how humanity is in a constant state of flux. This is ambitious work, acute in its commitment to the truth of lived experience. Beckett’s watch-maker’s eye for detail, impeccable ear, and intricate use of poetic form, reveal truths with a compassion that moves her work way beyond the confessional. Arranged in seven short sequences, that spiral round themes of loss, betrayal, delight and re-birth, this is a beautifully wrought collection; at times hard hitting and painful, yet funny and moving, and always surprising.

‘Occasionally a poet comes along pretty much fully formed. That is what I felt when I first read Elaine Beckett’s poems. Not only her voice - brazen, tender, angry and funny - but how it’s held in structures of great poise and resonance.

Absurd and revelatory, sometimes painful, these poems, steeped in a dark, ironic lyricism, are to be read and read again.’

– Greta Stoddart

Debut collection from Faber New Poets 13 author Elaine Beckett, whose Covid related poem Thursday went viral recently after being published in poetry review...
Thursday When the dusk comes in as quiet as this
as low as this, as dense as this,! like your whole world has gone back to where it began and you wonder how you got into this mess the kind of mess you cannot see an end to as if it may already have ended very badly and all you can hear is the sound of your own name spoken deep inside your own head, it is probably best to step back from whatever kind of brink you imagine you have reached and think about something else, something small and practical like boiling an egg.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verve Poetry Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912565955

Elaine Beckett

Elaine Beckett's debut pamphlet Faber New Poets 13 was published by Faber & Faber in 2016. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Review, Ambit, The North, The New European and anthologies, including Bloodaxe's Hallelujah for Fifty Foot Women. Her poems have regularly been shortlisted for the Bridport International Poetry Competition and this year also long listed for the National Poetry Competition. In 2020 she received a commission from the Ledbury Poetry Festival. Elaine has read her work on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, and at festivals including the Cambridge, Bridport and Exeter Literary Festivals. She originally trained as a musician and music therapist, later graduating from the National Film and TV School as a writer/director. She supervises arts therapists working in the UK and abroad, drawing on her experience as a visiting professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she taught for many years. (www.elainebeckett.com)