Rachel Long

Rachel Long’s vivid new collection is a study of toxic love, crisis and recovery, at once moving and whip-smart, from one of our brightest stars in poetry. 'At first you eat less because you’re happy, / so fricking happy, the way you are in high summer / when you just can’t because of the sun.' Sparrow on the Rooftop tells a story of new love: the summer-like giddiness of it, the ferocity of obsession, and the stark hollowing of absence. Alongside this affair, and unleashed by its intensity, unfolds another story, half-buried, about our young narrator’s uneasy relationship with her body: ‘Black girls// don’t get/ eating disorders./ That’s a white girl/ thing.’ Desire, indulgence, denial, and transformation are some of the themes that animate this engrossing, at times frighteningly intimate, narrative collection. With fierce wit and uncommon insight, Sparrow interrogates the self and other, and the experience of self as other. These remarkable, penetrating, headlong poems chart disorder and desire, break-up and breakdown, and the hard path towards recovery, confirming Rachel Long as one of the most gifted poets of her generation.

Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 'This debut collection is the modern poetry we need to read right now' Stylist 'An enchanting and heartwarming new voice in poetry.' Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other Rachel Long's much-anticipated debut collection of poems, My Darling from the Lions, announces the arrival of a thrilling new presence in poetry. Each poem has a vivid story to tell - of family quirks, the perils of dating, the grip of religion or sexual awakening - stories that are, by turn, emotionally insightful, politically conscious, wise, funny and outrageous. Long reveals herself as a razor-sharp and original voice on the issues of sexual politics and cultural inheritance that polarize our current moment. But it's her refreshing commitment to the power of the individual poem that will leave the reader turning each page in eager anticipation: here is an immediate,wide-awake poetry that entertains royally, without sacrificing a note of its urgency or remarkable skill.