A Full-On Basso Profundo

The collection addresses shared, topical challenges like identity, gender roles, belonging and family, at a time of shifting, heightened uncertainty. Themes which affect all of us like toxic masculinity, family disfunction, war, and climate, in fiercely imaginative, jagged, yet compassionate, sometimes absurdist, surreal fashion.

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Ken Evans’s collection is structured in three inter-locking and overlapping sequences: Family; Masculinity; and America. Subjects range from the personal sacrifice and meaning of an organ donation; the loss of a child in still-birth; the death of a friend through drink, as well as bigger themes of our constant wars and forebodings of climate collapse. But these poems also experience hope, humour and optimism shining through – and often co-existing with the darker themes, thus poems on the small vagaries and mishaps of our digital lives, of the money-anxieties of car maintenance, or of negotiating airport security with a replacement hip.