Dust Sucker is a remarkable new book-length poem by writer and translator Jen Calleja. Clear-eyed, expansive, and intoxicating, this exhilarating work deftly blurs disparate themes including time and mortality, communication and translation, intimacy and infertility. Presented as a deluxe bilingual bookwork, this 'contemplation of dust' explores the pollution of our environment - both at home and in nature - and the shoring of mental detritus. With unquestionable poignancy and flashes of sardonic wit, Calleja excavates her English-Irish-Maltese heritage, inherited anxieties, and ambivalence towards childlessness during climate crisis. Ultimately, Dust Sucker is triumphant proof that even when feeling dusty with despair, there exists a compulsion to find other means to traverse and communicate experience. This edition includes a German translation by award-winning Austrian poet Carolina Schutti; a companionable doppelganger befitting of a poem that finds connection across languages and in translation.

Clear-eyed, expansive, and intoxicating, this exhilarating work deftly blurs the disparate themes of time and mortality, communication and translation, intimacy and infertility

About the Author
Jen Calleja is a writer, literary translator and publisher originally from Shoreham-By-Sea and now based in Hastings. Her books include Vehicle: a verse novel, I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For and Serious Justice. She was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 for her translation of Marion Poschmann's The Pine Islands and was the first Translator in Residence at the British Library. She is co-director at Praspar Press, which publishes Maltese literature in English and English translation.


Book Information
ISBN 9781739616007
Author Jen Calleja
Format Paperback
Page Count 48
Imprint Makina Books
Publisher Makina Books
Dimensions(mm) 160mm * 128mm * 4mm