Life Immediately is a pacy, dynamic debut collection containing all the preoccupations of Lily Blacksell’s work, from womanhood, to music, to the natural world and our calamitous dealings with it, to the calamity and comedy of human relationships, romantic or otherwise. In eclectic, formally confident poems, balancing keen observation with wry insouciance, Blacksell’s writing showcases the expansiveness of language, but also its failures. Communication builds up and breaks down, geese honk, hangovers linger. Figures from Madonna to Magwitch appear, but not necessarily as you know them. Familiar settings – the pub, the library, the farmyard, the house party – are made strange. These are ranging poems with a rangy humour, and warmth as well as wit.
‘Riotous, creatively quixotic, both funny and deadly serious, Lily Blacksell's poetry is the result of a hyperintelligent imagination striving to find a voice that is as various and playful as the self. A voice 'presenting the play of my skull, intact', which has the marvellous effect of relighting the known world.' – Richard Scott
‘The collection won me over with its unique imagination that takes the everyday and gives it a fresh inside-out. The mundane can be astonishing or even more mundane, if that’s possible, in a poetry that’s hilarious and complex, witty and wise, understated and extravagant. A rare talent brimming with charm and mischief!’ – Daljit Nagra
‘Poetry that's remarkably and uniquely tuned to the social, to sensations, to the natural comedy in womanhood, and to the personal art of daily existence.’ – Holly Pester
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