our task is to sing in this killer place – but how does the body go on singing, in pain, in isolation, in dead-end love?

Tracey Slaughter’s powerful new collection of poems begins with the sequence that won the £10,000 Manchester Poetry Prize in 2023, opioid sonatas, which travels the jagged aftermath of a high-speed crash, charting the fallout of grief and the body’s long-term struggles with dosage and damage.

The sequence psychopathology of the small hotel haunts the rooms of stale, no-exit adultery, watching the trade-offs the body makes to dull its pain.

the girls in the red house are singing tunnels back into childhood and teenage years, to face the echoes of violence left unvoiced – and confront the legacy of rape culture.

nudes, animals & ruins circles the emptied streets during lockdown, listening for the sounds the body makes when it must survive alone.

‘Haunting and harrowing, yet executed with such forceful luminous brilliance. . . . We kept reading the poems aloud, revelling in the breath-taking momentum, beautiful language, and galloping rhythmic quality. . . . Outstanding.’ —Malika Booker, Manchester Poetry Prize 2023