Void Studies, Rachel Boast's extraordinary new collection, realizes a project that the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud had proposed, but never written. Etudes neantes was to consist of poems written as musical etudes; these would not convey any direct message - but instead summon the abstract spirit of their subject. This 'impossible project' has been completed by Boast in the most astonishing way, and in doing so she has increased the expressive possibilities of poetry itself. These tone poems are indeed works of pure music - but despite their esoteric nature are by no means 'difficult' in the usual sense: instead they conjure the recognizable states, emotions, moods, ambiances and strange atmospheres that lend our lives meaning, and together comprise a kind of lexicon of feeling. Void Studies is an airy and beautiful book - one in which Boast has spun a pure music to both ask and answer the most profound questions poetry can frame.

The breathtaking new collection from the winner of the Forward and Seamus Heaney Prizes for poetry.

About the Author
Rachael Boast is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Hotel Raphael. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Blackbox Manifold, Chicago Review, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, TLS and The Scores. She is co-editor of The Echoing Gallery: Bristol Poets and Art in the City (Redcliffe Press, 2013) and The Caught Habits of Language: An Entertainment for W.S. Graham for Him Having Reached One Hundred (Donut Press, 2018). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Advisor to the Estate of W.S. Graham and a disability advocate. She lives in Suffolk.

Awards
Commended for The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2017 (UK). Short-listed for T. S. Eliot Prize 2017 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781509811458
Author Rachael Boast
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Picador
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Weight(grams) 129g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 153mm * 8mm