A Year in the New Life (SHORTLISTED, TS ELIOT PRIZE 2021)

In Jack Underwood’s timely second poetry collection, A Year in the New Life, shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot prize, he considers his place in the world having become a father. Underwood exposes his innermost deliberations and fears, placing them within a world that is becoming increasingly alien for all of us.

Happiness

If the reader seeks hearts and flowers in the sunnily-named Happiness, they are to be found, albeit pumping viscerally or severed in vases. Jack Underwood questions how we experience, understand, appreciate and attempt to capture that sometimes elusive state. In something of a Ying/Yang complement he explores whether happiness is possible without its shadow boxer. Read More