The Havocs

by Jacob Polley

Little Gods established Jacob Polley as one of the leading talents of the younger generation; his third collection sees him extend that gift in often wholly unexpected directions. As before, Polley’s work is often unashamedly lyric, and displays a virtuosic range of form and address. However, the light has changed in The Havocs : these poems are often imbued with the weird, uncanny and otherworldly, drawing on the folkloric and mythic traditions of north Britain – as well as forms from older English traditions, including riddles and cautionary tales. However oblique his strategies, Polley’s work remains fixed on our most central our losses of faith, our working lives, our irrational fears and our loves. The Havocs charts a daring new turn in the work of one of our finest English poets.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. He is the author of three acclaimed books of poems, The Brink (2003), Little Gods (2006) and The Havocs (2012), all published by Picador, UK. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002, and both The Brink and The Havocs were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

In 2011, he was Arts Queensland’s poet-in-residence, and he was Visiting Fellow Commoner in the Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, 2005-7. He has also held residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and at the Wordsworth Trust.

In 2004, he was named one of the ‘Next Generation’ of the twenty best new poets in Britain. His first novel, Talk of the Town, a fiercely demotic and funny coming-of-age murder mystery, won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award. He teaches at the University of St Andrews and lives in Fife, Scotland.

Reviews

[Roy Woolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sonnets particularly strong - an unsentimental, touching and disturbing collection

[Eris Varga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uh-oh, it's the end of the year so time to cram poetry and graphic novels!!!

3.5*

I should have liked this more than I did - northern English folklore weaved into contemporary form and all that. Polley is still unmatched in his lyrical expressions of nature (I will return with some notable lines) However, none of them blew my head off and some were very short without really "earning it", which is of course only an opinion.

Stand out was The News - coz honestly, yeah.

[Kathleen Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is well crafted poetry, but for me there was something missing. The poems didn't inspire me, in fact I got quite bored at times. The poems read as though they've been self-consciously edited. Not my favourite Jake Polley collection.

[Richard Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really hadn't read a great deal of new poetry until I bought 'Jackself' by this author. It was so wonderfully moving that I bought this volume. Though it hasn't had the same emotional impact on me as 'Jackself' did, it's still beautifully lyrical and moving.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many of the poems felt like puzzles, which often didn't provide any reward when trying to unlock them.