Patricia Lockwood Libri

When the expense of a medical procedure forces the 30-year-old Patricia to move back in with her parents, husband in tow, she must learn to live again with her family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of a childhood spent in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Her father is a gun-toting, all-American, frequently semi-naked priest who underwent a religious conversion after watching The Exorcist 70 times on a Navy submarine; her mother, who emerges as the book's real heart, is a woman preternaturally concerned with the various disasters that could be about to befall her loved ones - and any nearby babies - at all times. Told with a keen comic sensibility that packs a laugh on almost every page, this is at the same time a lyrical and affecting true story of how, having ventured into the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.

Lockwood's long poem about being raped, Rape Joke, became a viral hit in 2013, not just because it is shocking, but because it is brilliant. The poems in [this] collection ... are the work of a genuine original. They are surreal, they are funny, they are subversive. They do what poetry is meant to do: they make you look at things in a different way Christina Patterson Sunday Times

'Patricia Lockwood is the voice of a generation' Namita Gokhale 'A masterpiece' Guardian 'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney 'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail 'I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book' David Sedaris 'A rare wonder . . . I was left in bits' Douglas Stuart * WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2022 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 * * A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK * ______________________________________________ This is a story about a life lived in two halves. It's about what happens when real life collides with the increasing absurdity of a world accessed through a screen. It's about living in world that contains both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary. It's a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time. ______________________________________________ 'An utterly distinctive mixture of depth, dazzling linguistic richness, anarchic wit and raw emotional candour' Rowan Williams A 2021 Book of the Year: Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Evening Standard, The Times, New Statesman, Red, Observer, Independent, Daily Telegraph

The 'Penguin Modern Poets' are succinct guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the curious reader and the seasoned lover of poetry to encounter the most exciting voices of our moment.

Candles and Water is a queer pillow book: a document of wreckage, haunting, and survival.This collection is made of fictions and diaries, dreams and lists, lies and ghost stories. Its fragments and filaments are lonely, joyous, enraged, sickly, and lost; and when they crystallize around a single voice, it is by way of healing from grief and recovery from addiction.