my name is abilene

Shortlisted for Best Collection in the 2023 Forward Prizes for Poetry

Sennitt Clough’s twisty fen-Gothic narratives are filled with macabre imagery and sexual violence. Imagine a monstrous fair that has arrived in deepest Cambridgeshire, only to discover that the inhabitants are far more frightening than the carnival. Rich in symbolism and mythology, it’s a thrilling read that will leave your mind as black as peat.

‘Elisabeth’s My Name is Abilene is an effervescent fable-world of desirous bodies and broken-hearted people akin to Vasko Popa – linguistically wide-ranging and formally both bombastic and refrained, this tightly-wrought telling of in-between lands and in-between emotional states is a haunting.’ — Rachael Allen