Carolyn Forché's Otherwhere reviewed in The Guardian
'This is my first and will be my only selected poems, a gathering of fifty years, published on the anniversary of my first book.’ – Carolyn Forché, on Otherwhere
Carolyn Forché is one of America’s most important contemporary poets – renowned as a ‘poet of witness’ – as well as an indefatigable human rights activist. Over five decades, she has crafted visionary work that has reinvigorated poetry's power to awaken the reader. Her groundbreaking poems have been testimonies, enquiries and wonderments. They daringly map a territory where poetry asserts our inexhaustible responsibility to each other.
Her new retrospective, Otherwhere: New & Selected Poems 1976-2026, is published by Bloodaxe in the UK and Ireland in October 2026, fifty years after her debut, Gathering the Tribes, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1975. It includes selections from that book and from four subsequent collections published by Bloodaxe in the UK: The Country Between Us (1981/2019), The Angel of History (1994), Blue Hour (2003) and In the Lateness of the World (2021), and opens with If there is ink, a group of 16 new poems.
~~~~
Carolyn Forché is on tour in the UK from 3 to 17 October 2026 to launch Otherwhere at a series of in-person readings in the North of England: Newcastle Poetry Festival, Hebden Bridge, Manchester Literature Festival, and Sheffield's Off the Shelf Festival of Words. Full details are on her events page here: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/events?articleid=1005
~~~~~
REVIEW IN THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian, Best recent poetry round-up, online Friday 2 October 2026
Carolyn Forché’s new retrospective Otherwhere: New & Selected Poems 1976-2026 was very well reviewed by Jennifer Lee Tsai in her October 2026 poetry round-up in The Guardian. The feature went online on 2 October, and will be published in print in The Guardian’s Saturday magazine on Saturday 3 October.
‘A landmark retrospective spanning five collections across five decades, this impressive volume opens with an eloquent preface, Older Than Glass, Younger Than Music, which delineates Forché’s poetics. What is remarkable about her work is a visionary ability to merge poems of personal intimacy with geopolitical realities, distinguishing her as a “poet of witness”. War, displacement and genocide are juxtaposed with elegiac meditations’ – Jennifer Lee Tsai, The Guardian (Best recent poetry round-up)
Due in print Saturday 3 October 2026. Online 2 October.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/oct/02/the-best-recent-poetry-review-roundup
~~~~~
JOINT ONLINE LAUNCH READING
Tuesday 20 October 2026, 7pm BST (YouTube Live)
Bloodaxe online launch reading with Jane Clarke, Carolyn Forché and Chase Twichell
International online launch event for our new October titles. Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley will be joined by Jane Clarke, Carolyn Forché and Chase Twichell. All three poets will be reading live from their new poetry books, followed by a discussion about their work.
This free Bloodaxe launch event will be streamed on YouTube Live on this YouTube page: https://youtube.com/live/p1cB6hjTCeY
Watch live or later via the same YouTube link: https://youtube.com/live/p1cB6hjTCeY
[02 October 2026]
