Kirjahaku

The second novel from exciting, young novelist Nick Laird - an artful meditation on love and life in contemporary London.

A very funny, energetic, wonderfully engaging novel about where we're from and where we'd like to get to...

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A powerful, thought-provoking novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended from one of our finest authors

Danny Williams didn't mean to be a lawyer, but somehow he is -- and for up to eighteen hours a day. He's well paid, home owning, and twenty-seven but is also overworked, lonely, and frequently stoned. The plan was to leave the troubles of a small town in Northern Ireland for the big city in England, but one evening an old school friend, Geordie, bursts into Danny's shiny new life. On the run from a Loyalist militia, Geordie brings everything Danny thought he had left behind and dumps it on his doorstep.With infectious wit and energy to burn, Utterly Monkey is a searing, fiercely funny, and ultimately redemptive novel about surviving an office job, outwitting the bad guys, and, hopefully, getting the girl.

"A confident hybrid of voices and styles...tender and brilliant."-Irish Times Journeying between his native Ulster and his adopted London, Nick Laird balances ideas of home and flight, the need for belonging and the need to remain outside. Dexterous, fresh, and deft, To a Fault does "more, in its range and ambition, than any other first collection...in at least the last ten years" (The Independent).

Laird s ear for smallish lexical mercies yields superb lines. Stephen Burt, New York Times Book Review

In this impressive debut, Nick Laird explores the sharp edge of relationships, from the intimacy of lovers to the brutality of political violence. Journeying between his native Ulster and his adopted London, he balances ideas of home and flight, the need for belonging and the need to remain outside. Formally deft, rhetorically fresh, these poems never shy from difficult choices, exploring cruelty and vengeance wherever they may be found: in love, in work and against political backdrops. But these are brave, resolute writings that resist despair at all times, affirming instead the need to rebuild and to right oneself, to dust down and carry on.

Laird's debut collection, To a Fault (2005), signalled the arrival of a significant new talent, 'doing more, in its range and ambition,' wrote Deryn Rees-Jones in the Independent, 'than any first collection I can think of in at least the last ten years.' On Purpose confirms the promise of that first book and shows the author hitting new and yet more athletic strides. Blending tones of assurance and delicacy, of confidence and vulnerability, On Purpose is a collection of poems that takes care and consideration in examining the often brutal arena of human relations, concluding with a mercurial and affecting sequence about a marriage, which takes, as its point of departure, that most influential of military treatise, The Art of War.

To a Fault, Nick Laird's debut collection, won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; On Purpose, his follow up, won a Somerset Maugham award for travel writing and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. In Go Giants, his third and most ambitious volume, Nick Laird's poetry travels yet further afield, connecting the shores of his native Northern Ireland with those of the American east coast where he spends increasing time. The result is an almost trans-Atlantic fusion, an inventive melding of Ulster lyricism with proto-Beat rhythms and phrase. The author's gaze appears longer and more penetrative than before, casting back across the ocean to find a fresh perspective on older questions while vividly capturing the vibrancy of the new. Nick Laird writes with wit and candour, with polemic and persuasion, with no subject seemingly too large or too small: weapons of mass destruction, sectarian violence, religious faith, Jonah and the Whale, marriage, fatherhood, a daughter. A profoundly versatile collection, equally capable of public crescendo and a more personal hum, Go Giants is a daring and a thrilling endeavour by a writer described by Colm Toibin as 'an assured and brilliant voice in Irish poetry'.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2018Nick Laird has been an assured and brilliant voice in contemporary poetry since his acclaimed debut, To a Fault, in 2005. Feel Free, his fourth collection, effortlessly spans the Atlantic, combining the acoustic expansiveness of Whitman or Ashbery with the lyricism of Laird's forebears Heaney, MacNeice and Yeats. With characteristic variety, invention and wit (here are elegies, monologues, formal poems and free verse) the poet explores the sundry patterns of freedom and constraint - the family, the impress of history, the body itself - and how we might transcend them.Feel Free is always daring, always renewing, and Laird's most remarkable work to date.

Reeling in the face of collapsing systems, of politics, identity and the banalities and distortions of modern living, Nick Laird confronts age-old anxieties, questions of aloneness, friendship, the push and pull of daily life. At the book's heart lies the title sequence, a profound meditation on a father's dying, the reverberations of which echo throughout in poems that interrogate inheritance and legacy, illness and justice, accounts of what is lost and what, if anything, can be retrieved.Laird is a poet capable of heading off in any and every direction, where layers of association transport us from a clifftop in County Cork to the library steps in New York's Washington Square, from a face-off between Freud and Michelangelo's Moses to one between the poet and a squirrel in a Kilburn garden. There is conflation and conflagration, rage and fire, neither of which are seen as necessarily destructive. But there is great tenderness, too, a fondness for what grows between the cracks, especially those glimpses into the unadulterated world of childhood, before the knowledge or accumulation of loss, where everything is still at stake and infinite, 'the darkness under the cattle grid'.

Nick Laird's powerful new collection reflects on the strange and chaotic times we live in. Reeling in the face of collapsing systems and the banalities and distortions of modern life, the poet confronts age-old anxieties, questions of aloneness, friendship, illness and death, the push and pull of daily existence.Laird is a poet capable of heading off in any and every direction, where layers of association transport us from a harbour in County Cork to the library steps in New York's Washington Square, from a face-off between Freud and Michelangelo's Moses to one between the poet and a squirrel in a Kilburn garden. And at the heart of the collection lies the title sequence 'Up Late', a profound meditation on a father's dying, and winner of the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.There is conflation and conflagration, rage and fire, neither of which are seen as necessarily destructive. But there is great tenderness, too, a fondness for what grows between the cracks, especially those glimpses into the unadulterated world of childhood, where everything is still at stake and infinite as 'the darkness under the cattle grid'.'Up Late, passionate and angry as Hamlet, is formally brilliant, an exercise in control.' Martina Evans, Irish Times'Laird's fifth collection glimmers with angsty maturity as it manoeuvres its way between introspection and elegy . . . Elsewhere, Laird cracks open the poetry of sensitivity to reveal a raw sense of politics and injustice "as the rich get richer and the poor get fucked".' Philip Terry, Guardian

Feel Free, the fourth collection from acclaimed poet Nick Laird, effortlessly spans the Atlantic, combining the acoustic expansiveness of Whitman or Ashbery with the lyricism of Laird's forebears Heaney, MacNeice, and Yeats.With characteristic variety, invention, and wit (here are elegies, monologues, formal poems, and free verse) he explores the sundry patterns of freedom and constraint-- the family, the impress of history, the body itself-- and how we might transcend them. Always daring, always renewing, Feel Free is Laird's most remarkable work to date.

Reeling in the face of collapsing systems, of politics, identity, and the banalities and distortions of modern living, Nick Laird confronts age-old anxieties, questions of aloneness, friendship, the push and pull of daily life. These poems transport us from a clifftop in Ireland's County Cork to a bench in New York's Washington Square, from a face-off between Freud and Michelangelo's Moses to one between the poet and a squirrel in a London garden.At the book's heart lies the Forward Prize-winning title sequence, a profound meditation on a father's dying at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The reverberations of this knockout poem echo through the volume in its interrogations of inheritance and legacy, illness and justice, accounts of what is lost and what, if anything, can be retained. Amid rage, grief, and the conflagration of reality, Laird finds tenderness in the moments of connection that grow between the cracks and offers glimpses into the unadulterated world of childhood, where everything is still at stake and infinite.Astonishing in its emotional range and intellect, Up Late is a powerful volume from an "exceptionally gifted poet" (Paul Muldoon, Times Literary Supplement).

Reeling in the face of collapsing systems, of politics, identity, and the banalities and distortions of modern living, Nick Laird confronts age-old anxieties, questions of aloneness, friendship, the push and pull of daily life. These poems transport us from a clifftop in Ireland's County Cork to a bench in New York's Washington Square, from a face-off between Freud and Michelangelo's Moses to one between the poet and a squirrel in a London garden.At the book's heart lies the Forward Prize-winning title sequence, a profound meditation on a father's dying at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The reverberations of this knockout poem echo through the volume in its interrogations of inheritance and legacy, illness and justice, accounts of what is lost and what, if anything, can be retained. Amid rage, grief, and the conflagration of reality, Laird finds tenderness in the moments of connection that grow between the cracks and offers glimpses into the unadulterated world of childhood, where everything is still at stake and infinite.Astonishing in its emotional range and intellect, Up Late is a powerful volume from an "exceptionally gifted poet" (Paul Muldoon, Times Literary Supplement).