Near Future

By Suzannah Evans

Suzannah Evans' debut collection Near Future is doom-pop-poetry with an apocalyptic edge, a darkly humorous journey through sci-fi lullabies and northern mysteries. This is a future simulation stripped of the space-age gloss of progression - one where the robots have gone rogue and the hopes of a new millennium are malfunctioning; this is a skewed yet oddly familiar world gone uncannily wrong.

These playful, sharp, poems are also about more than dystopias and five types of possible apocalypse - in looking at the worst-case scenarios, Evans comes closer to the bigger narrative; universal truths of change, whether man-made or natural, preventable of inevitable, and the uncertain business of human existence where 'there are disasters that you cannot prepare yourself for'. Evans brings a distinctive, skilful and wonderfully peculiar roving eye to our restless and unpredictable times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781911027645

Suzannah Evans

Suzannah Evans is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Sheffield. Her poetry has been widely published in magazines including Magma, The Rialto, The North, Poetry Review, Butcher's Dog, Poetry Wales and The Guardian's Poem of The Week. Her debut collection Near Future was published by Nine Arches Press in November 2018. Suzannah was the winner of a Gladstone’s Library residency, and spent a month living and writing at the library in 2019.

Book preview

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Near Future

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Near Future

Suzannah Evans

ISBN: 9781911027461

ePub ISBN: 9781911027645

Copyright © Suzannah Evans

Cover artwork: ‘Projections’ © Bryan Olson

www.bryanolsoncollage.com

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Suzannah Evans has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published November 2018 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by:

Imprint Digital

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding through Arts Council England.

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CONTENTS

A Contingency Plan

The Doomer’s Daughter

Helpline

The Handover

Roboblackbird

Summer with Robobees

The Dark Museum

We just passed on the street

This is The End

The End of the End of the World

Sometimes in your own head

Wholly Communion

Real Time

The New Tenants

The Law of Attraction

The New Curriculum

Future Cities

1. The Censored City

2. The Floating City

3. The Plug-In City

This is England’s greenest city

This morning the walls

The Russian Woodpecker

Reconstructing the Monument

Underground in the new Meanwood

The Taste

Guided Tour

Wyre

Trevor on the Long Mynd

About the Dog

Naming the Hill

Coastal Erosion

Extinct Scents

De-extinction

Skies Recorded by the Cyanometer

The Fatbergs

The Humans and the Starlings

Re-wilding

Craters

Letter into Eternity

The Last Poet-in-Residence

Acknowledgements

About the author and this book

‘The Story Just Keeps Going. You’re Supposed To Wrap It Up All Nicely But It’s Real Life. It’s Hard. So I Think I’m Just Going To Have The World Explode.’

Michelle Tea, Black Wave

A Contingency Plan

What if we’re apart when the asteroid comes

or the magnetic storm that shuts off the power?

You could be waiting for a train as the sun’s bulb

flickers out, high above the glass-panelled roof.

I’ll be at work. We’ll lose the phone lines

the door-entry system will go haywire.

I will eat from the vending machine

drink from the competition cupboard

and sleep on nylon carpet with my colleagues

all of us