Second Place winner of the 2020 Laurel Prize for Ecopoetry. A 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Following her groundbreaking 2014 debut An Aviary of Small Birds (`technically perfect poems of winged heartbreak' - Observer), Karen McCarthy Woolf returns with Seasonal Disturbances. Set against a backdrop of ecological and emotional turbulence, these poems are charged yet meditative explorations of nature, the city, and the self. A sinister CEO presides over a dystopian hinterland where private detectives investigate crimes against hollyhocks; Halcyon is discovered as a dead kingfisher, washed up on an Italian beach. Lyrical and inventive, McCarthy Woolf's poems test classic and contemporary forms, from a disrupted zuihitsu that considers her relationship with water, to the landay, golden shovel, and gram of &. As a fifth-generation Londoner and daughter of a Jamaican emigre, McCarthy Woolf makes a variety of linguistic subversions that critique the rhetoric of the British class system. Political as they may be, these poems are not reportage: they aim to inspire what the author describes as an `activism of the heart, where we connect to and express forces of renewal and love'.

*Karen's first book, An Aviary of Small Birds, a Guardian Book of the Year, a PBS Recommendation, was shortlisted for Forward Prize 2015 Best First Collection*Selected for the European poetry initiative Versopolis and US Breaking Ground BME writer tour*Poet in Residence at Greenwich Maritime Museum, Karen gave voice to migrants and refugees, then performed at international festivals in Sweden, the Caribbean and Mexico

About the Author
Karen McCarthy Woolf was born in London to an English mother and a Jamaican father. She is the recipient of the Kate Betts Memorial Prize and an Arts and Humanities Research Council scholarship from Royal Holloway, where she is a PhD candidate. She is the editor of three literary anthologies, most recently Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014). Her poetry has been published in Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation among others.

Reviews
'McCarthy Woolf has a powerful command of form and rhythm.' - Poetry Review; 'I loved Karen McCarthy Woolf's technically perfect poems of winged heartbreak.' - The Observer New Review; `Seasonal Disturbances might be strange, but it's also a brilliant selection of poems [...] It's a collection that teaches you something about human beings as well as yourself.' - The Poetry School


Awards
Winner of The Laurel Prize for Ecopoetry, Second Place 2020.



Book Information
ISBN 9781784103361
Author Karen McCarthy Woolf
Format Paperback
Page Count 84
Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
Publisher Carcanet Press Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 135mm * 8mm