Description
About the Author
Jay Gao is the author of three poetry pamphlets: TRAVESTY58 (2022); Katabasis (2020), a winner of a New Poets Prize; and Wedding Beasts (2019), shortlisted for the Saltire-Callum MacDonald Award. He is a Contributing Editor at The White Review. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, he earned his MFA at Brown University, and is currently a PhD student at Columbia University.
Reviews
'Nuanced, challenging, sometimes hilarious, often anguished, this impressive reimagining of The Odyssey makes for an unforgettable road trip; Gao's Odysseus is a nervy and compelling traveller, a sort of non-hero, itinerant and always somewhat lost. Waylaid with Gao in hotel bars and tour buses, we are estranged, sensitized as we go to the dislocations and non-belonging of children of the world's diasporas, and also to the structures of appropriation and exploitation embedded in travel. We are all conditioned and implicated; but perhaps this acute and attentive Odysseus is exactly who we need to help us listen to the buried histories of Imperialism, to "wait a little differently, mourn a / little more".' - Fiona Benson;'These poems reject the heroism of the legible "I". If a central figure emerges it might be that of the Anti-Translator, not there to disclose personal information but to reveal the bareness of our "corpse-lives". Jay Gao's Imperium marks a new chapter in British poetry, bringing to bear a new complexity, richness of thought and influence.' - Will Harris
Awards
Winner of A Somerset Maugham Award 2023 and An Eric Gregory Award 2023 and The Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2023. Short-listed for The Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award 2023.
Book Information
ISBN 9781800172470
Author Jay Gao
Format Paperback
Page Count 92
Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
Publisher Carcanet Press Ltd