Masculinity: An anthology of modern voices

by Aaron Kent (editor), Rick Dove (editor), Stuart McPherson (editor)

330 pages, Paperback

Published January 31, 2024

About the author

Aaron Kent is a working class poet and publisher born and raised in Cornwall. He runs Broken Sleep Books and has had several pamphlets released. J H Prynne called his poetry 'Unicorn flavoured' and how do you top that?

Reviews

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I want an anthology to be: exploring a theme from huge variety of perspectives and styles and leaving you with new thoughts about that theme.

[Leonids · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty decent collection of poetry, with varied, interesting perspectives conveyed in various sensitive and creative ways. That diversity is both a credit to the collection and its downfall - in the various different styles of poetry and subject matter, there were as many that didn't quite hit for me as those that did.

I really enjoyed and connected with the poetry on transmasculinity and queer masculinities, which is....unsurprising. There were also some really heartwarming and heartwrenching works on grief and fatherhood which I enjoyed a lot.

I don't want to understate how good of a *collection* I think this is - if you want a work on a breadth of masculinities, this is a fantastic anthology. I think I'm just still working on 'getting' poetry a little better, so some of the works were just a little beyond my enjoyment.