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Up Late: Poems
A revelatory collection from a poet praised for “a truth-telling that’s political, existential, and above all, emotional” (Terrance Hayes). The poems in Nick Laird’s fifth volume, Up Late , reflect on the strange and chaotic times we live in. Reeling in the face of collapsing systems, of politics, identity and the banalities and distortions of modern living, the poet confronts age-old anxieties, questions of aloneness, friendship, the push and pull of daily life. At the book’s heart lies the Forward Prize–winning title sequence, a moving and 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. From “Up Late”
You could never let anything go, a trait
I also suffer from, and kind of admire, but
this is not a possibility. The tick of the clock
is meltwater dripping into the fissure.
You could never let anything go, a trait
I also suffer from, and kind of admire, but
this is not a possibility. The tick of the clock
is meltwater dripping into the fissure.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
First published November 14, 2023
8 people are currently reading
253 people want to read
About the author
Nick Laird
32 books109 followersNick Laird was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in 1975. He read English Literature at Cambridge University, and then worked for several years as a lawyer specializing in international litigation.
He is the author of two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover's Mistake, and two collections of poetry, To A Fault and On Purpose. A new volume of poetry, Go Giants, is forthcoming from Faber in January 2013.
Laird has won many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Rupert and Eithne Strong award, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He has published poetry and essays in many journals including the New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and wrote a column on poetry for two years for the Guardian newspaper.
He has taught at Columbia University, Manchester University and Barnard College.
He is the author of two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover's Mistake, and two collections of poetry, To A Fault and On Purpose. A new volume of poetry, Go Giants, is forthcoming from Faber in January 2013.
Laird has won many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Rupert and Eithne Strong award, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He has published poetry and essays in many journals including the New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and wrote a column on poetry for two years for the Guardian newspaper.
He has taught at Columbia University, Manchester University and Barnard College.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
November 17, 2023
reader, as you go about your afternoon or evening
be sure to send my best – please give my love I mean – to every one, to every thing.
Review to follow.
be sure to send my best – please give my love I mean – to every one, to every thing.
Review to follow.
July 29, 2023
Theodicy
A human is not such a perfect machine.
I didn’t design it for interaction particularly
with other machines—not closely—not non-stop.
I made the campfire, for example, to be nature’s
television but with a human being basically
I was thinking of a tree, of what a tree needs.
A root system, distance, light and air. Even living
you are tearing through something made not
of particles but of the relations between them.
This morning, it really does seem necessary
to tell you, I made the mist lie above the contours
of the forest in the precise shape of the remains
of a poster a boy is ripping from a plywood siding
on Rue du Regard in the Sixth Arrondissement.
As to the question of pain—why it hurts, why
sometimes we crave it—I have here a number
of promising leads but the matter is dark, so
called because it does not interact with light.
As you know there is no decent performance
without restraint. And all these polyphonic
symphonies it should not be possible to generate
by one person alone and yet—and yet—and yet
when any of you come into my presence
the room takes on a new tone. I did my best
in the sense I didn’t underestimate the depths
of tenderness an animal—almost any animal—
might stir in us like color into paint. I gave you
that, and if I slept in a stone or slept in a bomb,
or slept over a brothel during the gold rush,
if I slept in a cave in the mountain of Ulrith—
what I dreamt of was myself as a child of three
or four standing on the top step, dressed for bed,
weeping inconsolably and still getting yelled at. (6-7)
Talking to the Sun in Washington Square
Now the sun is trying to tell you something
by splitting through the cloud like that. Some secret as to how its light
walks and flies at the same time, or why the nature of formations - clouds,
crowds, poems, marriage - is that they dissolve, and why there is such
an effort in just not. Heaven is a past participle of heave, the sun notes,
and the fountain stands to attention until she sets and it slumps to the pool.
You'd like to hear more about that sometime but not quite yet. You want
to know if all lives viewed from the inside present as a series of failures.
You want the side door held ajar a moment longer. (25)
Up Late
I want the poem to destroy time.
What are the ceremonies of forgetting? (44)
--
Do you remember the pure world? I remember it
from being a kid. All was at stake in that place,
one moved through it sideways, through forests
of time, lost in them, and had to be called back
to the moment. Infinities growing in stone,
in moss, in the hashed, the rain, the wind,
in the darkness under the cattle grid.
Rilke says of the pure unseparated element -
'... someone dies and is it.' (50)
A human is not such a perfect machine.
I didn’t design it for interaction particularly
with other machines—not closely—not non-stop.
I made the campfire, for example, to be nature’s
television but with a human being basically
I was thinking of a tree, of what a tree needs.
A root system, distance, light and air. Even living
you are tearing through something made not
of particles but of the relations between them.
This morning, it really does seem necessary
to tell you, I made the mist lie above the contours
of the forest in the precise shape of the remains
of a poster a boy is ripping from a plywood siding
on Rue du Regard in the Sixth Arrondissement.
As to the question of pain—why it hurts, why
sometimes we crave it—I have here a number
of promising leads but the matter is dark, so
called because it does not interact with light.
As you know there is no decent performance
without restraint. And all these polyphonic
symphonies it should not be possible to generate
by one person alone and yet—and yet—and yet
when any of you come into my presence
the room takes on a new tone. I did my best
in the sense I didn’t underestimate the depths
of tenderness an animal—almost any animal—
might stir in us like color into paint. I gave you
that, and if I slept in a stone or slept in a bomb,
or slept over a brothel during the gold rush,
if I slept in a cave in the mountain of Ulrith—
what I dreamt of was myself as a child of three
or four standing on the top step, dressed for bed,
weeping inconsolably and still getting yelled at. (6-7)
Talking to the Sun in Washington Square
Now the sun is trying to tell you something
by splitting through the cloud like that. Some secret as to how its light
walks and flies at the same time, or why the nature of formations - clouds,
crowds, poems, marriage - is that they dissolve, and why there is such
an effort in just not. Heaven is a past participle of heave, the sun notes,
and the fountain stands to attention until she sets and it slumps to the pool.
You'd like to hear more about that sometime but not quite yet. You want
to know if all lives viewed from the inside present as a series of failures.
You want the side door held ajar a moment longer. (25)
Up Late
I want the poem to destroy time.
What are the ceremonies of forgetting? (44)
--
Do you remember the pure world? I remember it
from being a kid. All was at stake in that place,
one moved through it sideways, through forests
of time, lost in them, and had to be called back
to the moment. Infinities growing in stone,
in moss, in the hashed, the rain, the wind,
in the darkness under the cattle grid.
Rilke says of the pure unseparated element -
'... someone dies and is it.' (50)
Read
January 15, 2024A hard one to give stars to, so, no.
The central long poem that gives the collection its title is perfect - an elegy for Laird's father, a meditation not just on death and grief, but on how we try to explain or capture death and grief and what's been lost; and how language always fails to do this, but it's all we have, so on we go. With each new segment of the poem Laird opens this up into more expansive, philosophical, spiritual spaces while keeping it completely individual, through details gathered about himself and his father. A masterpiece.
The two parts either side of it seem roughly linear in chronology: poems before his father's death, set mostly in America; poems after, set mostly in London and Northern Ireland. The latter poems aren't always as strong - there's a rather patronising one about how Facebook and Twitter are bad, while other poems feel like the same poem in different iterations, either memories of Laird's father not captured in the 'Up Late' sequence, or birds and squirrels becoming symbolic jumping-off points. (He seems cross with the squirrels for not being birds.) I thought perhaps Laird needed a cooling-off period after writing these poems before deciding whether to include all of them; a few seemed like they would have benefited from being rewritten in the light of one another, rather than sitting apart as separate pieces.
I enjoyed the American poems in the first half more: the language is precise and impactful, with a density that forces us to heightened attention. These poems are full of deliberate glitches ("I opened the door on the light and the light / rain falling on the water") and surprising images that encourage immediate second readings (the slip at the end of 'Theodicy', which unmasks the narrator as not exactly God the Creator, but a God, a creator; an important part of a fathers-and-children puzzle Laird works on throughout this book).
Across the collection as a whole, however, there's a tendency for Laird to ask the same question. While 'Up Late' gives real weight and emotional importance to the problem of what poetry is for - why be "a poet", why write and to what end, can poetry ever have any real meaning, etc - Laird asks it five or six times in other poems, and rarely with the same resonance. A poem where Laird casts himself as a paper clip, holding his poems together; a poem about what a poet "is" that borrows the old "this statement is a lie" thought experiment; a poem about giving himself a lockdown haircut in the mirror and "something like a poem / glances back". Writing poems about writing poems is always risky, and I think Laird only really pulls it off in the long poem. But even this is all part of how seriously and regularly Laird attends to his internal life and the life around him, and works hard at asking, or untangling, the big questions he finds there. As weaknesses they seem to come from the same source as his other poems' strengths.
The central long poem that gives the collection its title is perfect - an elegy for Laird's father, a meditation not just on death and grief, but on how we try to explain or capture death and grief and what's been lost; and how language always fails to do this, but it's all we have, so on we go. With each new segment of the poem Laird opens this up into more expansive, philosophical, spiritual spaces while keeping it completely individual, through details gathered about himself and his father. A masterpiece.
The two parts either side of it seem roughly linear in chronology: poems before his father's death, set mostly in America; poems after, set mostly in London and Northern Ireland. The latter poems aren't always as strong - there's a rather patronising one about how Facebook and Twitter are bad, while other poems feel like the same poem in different iterations, either memories of Laird's father not captured in the 'Up Late' sequence, or birds and squirrels becoming symbolic jumping-off points. (He seems cross with the squirrels for not being birds.) I thought perhaps Laird needed a cooling-off period after writing these poems before deciding whether to include all of them; a few seemed like they would have benefited from being rewritten in the light of one another, rather than sitting apart as separate pieces.
I enjoyed the American poems in the first half more: the language is precise and impactful, with a density that forces us to heightened attention. These poems are full of deliberate glitches ("I opened the door on the light and the light / rain falling on the water") and surprising images that encourage immediate second readings (the slip at the end of 'Theodicy', which unmasks the narrator as not exactly God the Creator, but a God, a creator; an important part of a fathers-and-children puzzle Laird works on throughout this book).
Across the collection as a whole, however, there's a tendency for Laird to ask the same question. While 'Up Late' gives real weight and emotional importance to the problem of what poetry is for - why be "a poet", why write and to what end, can poetry ever have any real meaning, etc - Laird asks it five or six times in other poems, and rarely with the same resonance. A poem where Laird casts himself as a paper clip, holding his poems together; a poem about what a poet "is" that borrows the old "this statement is a lie" thought experiment; a poem about giving himself a lockdown haircut in the mirror and "something like a poem / glances back". Writing poems about writing poems is always risky, and I think Laird only really pulls it off in the long poem. But even this is all part of how seriously and regularly Laird attends to his internal life and the life around him, and works hard at asking, or untangling, the big questions he finds there. As weaknesses they seem to come from the same source as his other poems' strengths.
Read
September 9, 2023I won't lie, most of this poetry collection felt like it went over my head. I did find the poem about his father's death really poignant, but I struggled sinking into the rest.
Thank you to the publisher & NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to the publisher & NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
May 17, 2025
Avoid slaughter by growing so large, you can't fit into the machine.
December 26, 2023
A very talented poet whose entirely ideology was downloaded from the BBC.
Read
June 29, 2025A favourite
June 7, 2025
Let me start by saying that Nick Laird is obviously a brilliant craftsman—there’s more than enough in his career to back that up. But this collection just didn’t land for me. More misses than hits.
I picked it up off the strength of a podcast a mate sent me where Laird reads Attention—and honestly, it floored me. Brought me to my knees. The delivery was so good. Even the host got choked up (pretty sure it was a Faber podcast), so it clearly wasn’t just me. Then I heard another one of his poems—an older one—read by Frank Skinner on his (genuinely excellent) poetry podcast. It felt like the universe was nudging me towards Laird. And, y’know, they say you’re only as good as your last fight, so this is where I started.
But yeah… I think Nick Laird has a weed problem. And if he doesn’t, then I definitely have a problem with how he writes about it. There’s this kind of forced rebellious vibe to it—like, “Yeah, I’m a successful poet doing panel events and festivals, but I still get high, so I’m just like you guys.” It comes off a bit try-hard. Bit cringe, to be honest.
Poems I didn’t like at all: On a Paper Clip, Pac Man, Mixed Marriage, The Hudson River, Anne Frank.
Poems I really liked: Property, The Vocation, Inside Voice.
Some of it—like Sesame Street and Hudson River—gave me that feeling of someone borrowing other people’s trauma and dressing it up as insight. I know writers can write what they want, but those two in particular felt a bit… dodgy. Like they were trying to do something weighty and meaningful, but it didn’t sit right.
Then there’s the title poem, Up Late. Still not sure how I feel about it. The opening felt like something someone would think is really deep when they´re stoned—big, floaty thought with not much underneath it. But there are moments of the fifteen page/stanza middle section that are just gorgeous. For example, there’s the stanza that opens:
“When I phoned the hospital this afternoon…”
And yeah. That hit hard. Genuinely knocked the wind out of me. Might’ve hit me even harder than Attention. I honestly can’t remember the last time a poem made me tear up. That one will stay with me. The real standout for me was Vespers at Pacifico’s. Just a perfect poem. Wouldn’t change a single word. Also loved The Inheritance, Politics, and Modest Proposal. Smart, funny, and properly well executed.
So yeah—I'm glad I read it, even if it didn’t fully click with me. The highs were really high, but the lows made me question whether I was reading the same poet I’d heard on those podcasts. I’ll still keep an eye on whatever he does next, but this one just didn’t hit the mark overall.
I picked it up off the strength of a podcast a mate sent me where Laird reads Attention—and honestly, it floored me. Brought me to my knees. The delivery was so good. Even the host got choked up (pretty sure it was a Faber podcast), so it clearly wasn’t just me. Then I heard another one of his poems—an older one—read by Frank Skinner on his (genuinely excellent) poetry podcast. It felt like the universe was nudging me towards Laird. And, y’know, they say you’re only as good as your last fight, so this is where I started.
But yeah… I think Nick Laird has a weed problem. And if he doesn’t, then I definitely have a problem with how he writes about it. There’s this kind of forced rebellious vibe to it—like, “Yeah, I’m a successful poet doing panel events and festivals, but I still get high, so I’m just like you guys.” It comes off a bit try-hard. Bit cringe, to be honest.
Poems I didn’t like at all: On a Paper Clip, Pac Man, Mixed Marriage, The Hudson River, Anne Frank.
Poems I really liked: Property, The Vocation, Inside Voice.
Some of it—like Sesame Street and Hudson River—gave me that feeling of someone borrowing other people’s trauma and dressing it up as insight. I know writers can write what they want, but those two in particular felt a bit… dodgy. Like they were trying to do something weighty and meaningful, but it didn’t sit right.
Then there’s the title poem, Up Late. Still not sure how I feel about it. The opening felt like something someone would think is really deep when they´re stoned—big, floaty thought with not much underneath it. But there are moments of the fifteen page/stanza middle section that are just gorgeous. For example, there’s the stanza that opens:
“When I phoned the hospital this afternoon…”
And yeah. That hit hard. Genuinely knocked the wind out of me. Might’ve hit me even harder than Attention. I honestly can’t remember the last time a poem made me tear up. That one will stay with me. The real standout for me was Vespers at Pacifico’s. Just a perfect poem. Wouldn’t change a single word. Also loved The Inheritance, Politics, and Modest Proposal. Smart, funny, and properly well executed.
So yeah—I'm glad I read it, even if it didn’t fully click with me. The highs were really high, but the lows made me question whether I was reading the same poet I’d heard on those podcasts. I’ll still keep an eye on whatever he does next, but this one just didn’t hit the mark overall.
May 19, 2025
“…
Oppen thought each person must define, alone, and the grass is dead and brown,
and everything is happening much faster than expected, but my work is seasonal,
and this is the kind one does in spring, when everything is meant to be returning,
and the experts were all right, and then were not alright; concerned, worried,
stunned, aghast – despairing – and I read once flabbergasted, all the experts
flabbergasted at how the losses multiply, and wait to devastate, and the wheels
are coming off the thing even if this bee persists against the glass, and the squirrel
shakes the blossom as it moves through, still sore, but it is I that am nothing today,
it is I that put away my grief, and reader, as you go about your afternoon or evening
be sure to send my best – please give my love I mean – to every one, to every thing.”
Beautiful, felt like I was having a deep conversation with a friend but also with myself (?) !
Oppen thought each person must define, alone, and the grass is dead and brown,
and everything is happening much faster than expected, but my work is seasonal,
and this is the kind one does in spring, when everything is meant to be returning,
and the experts were all right, and then were not alright; concerned, worried,
stunned, aghast – despairing – and I read once flabbergasted, all the experts
flabbergasted at how the losses multiply, and wait to devastate, and the wheels
are coming off the thing even if this bee persists against the glass, and the squirrel
shakes the blossom as it moves through, still sore, but it is I that am nothing today,
it is I that put away my grief, and reader, as you go about your afternoon or evening
be sure to send my best – please give my love I mean – to every one, to every thing.”
Beautiful, felt like I was having a deep conversation with a friend but also with myself (?) !
November 26, 2024
Nick Laird is a Northern Irish poet and novelist. He jokes that he has been called an Irish poet and a British novelistt. He is also known for being married to Zadie Smith, the British novelist. Laird practiced law early in his adult life. This collection contains poems about being a father, and a son. The title poem is a long poem about the death of his father. There are poems about Northern Ireland, and New York City where hs is lived off and on for several years.
Laird's poetic voice is his own, and expands the pantheon of poets that Northern Ireland is known for.
Laird's poetic voice is his own, and expands the pantheon of poets that Northern Ireland is known for.
July 29, 2023
“The soundtrack of an endless quarrel. An evening to go on and on burning. Cocteau was asked if his home was on fire, what one thing would he save? The fire, he said, only the fire.”
“Leave the shape of your face in every pillow in your apartment. / Listen to the sirens outside rising and falling. / When a thought comes that will lead you into the past or future, dismiss it.”
“Leave the shape of your face in every pillow in your apartment. / Listen to the sirens outside rising and falling. / When a thought comes that will lead you into the past or future, dismiss it.”
May 25, 2024
This was supposed to be a fun, easy, before-bed read, but instead, I was given poetry that was not only difficult to get through due to the words I had to keep looking up in the dictionary (I love feeling like an idiot, thank you so much or that) but most of them were thought-provoking, which is good when you have the brain power and aren't trying to go to sleep.
July 13, 2024
This is a hard one to rate, because I'm sure to anyone who considers themselves a poet or Irish or an Irish poet this might be the best collection ever. But to me, it felt distant, inaccessible. I must grant that It may have to do with some ignorance on my part, but even so... I felt that gap and I can't give a good rating because of it.
September 15, 2023
Good and quick read, didn’t make me feel that emotional, still has great poems within it
December 19, 2023
My mind wandered until the last dozen poems. Then I was immersed.
January 28, 2024
Some of the poems did nothing for me, most were good, and a few were really really good
December 10, 2024
There are gems in here, and I would know after analysing every single poem in the collection
December 30, 2024
VERY IMPORTANT
August 27, 2023
This was a very short book of poems. Since this wasn't a normal novel with a plot and characters
instead it was filled with short poems. I loved this because it gave the reader just enough information to interoperate the poems how they see them instead of having it spoon fed to them the whole time. The length of the poems was perfect because it really let the reader visualise everything without being overkill on metaphors and similes. From the title of the book I was expecting more poems about human life and interactions of people in the darkness when they are unseen by everyone else however this book was producing more poems on almost the world and nature so it was very different than I had originally thought. However even still I still managed to connect to some of these poems and see them for what they were worth. The only thing I wasn't a big fan of was I found that a lot of the poems didn't flow as nicely into the next one as some other books that I've read, however lots of them stood alone nicely. Pretty good read just not my favourite.
instead it was filled with short poems. I loved this because it gave the reader just enough information to interoperate the poems how they see them instead of having it spoon fed to them the whole time. The length of the poems was perfect because it really let the reader visualise everything without being overkill on metaphors and similes. From the title of the book I was expecting more poems about human life and interactions of people in the darkness when they are unseen by everyone else however this book was producing more poems on almost the world and nature so it was very different than I had originally thought. However even still I still managed to connect to some of these poems and see them for what they were worth. The only thing I wasn't a big fan of was I found that a lot of the poems didn't flow as nicely into the next one as some other books that I've read, however lots of them stood alone nicely. Pretty good read just not my favourite.
September 24, 2023
This book has a whole bunch of super interesting poetry. A lot of them are super short, but there is surprisingly a decent amount of information and emotion packed into even the shortest poems. I really enjoyed reading these poems.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews