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Chaotic Good
WINNER OF THE JERWOOD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION
A piercing debut about how we are made, how we get lost and how we find new selves.
Framed by the story of escape from a toxic marriage, Chaotic Good focuses on the incremental ways in which power accumulates, shifts and is relinquished within both home and community. Incisive, rigorous and artful, Isabelle Baafi reminds us of the importance of self-determination, and how, when we feel most eroded, we might discover what we need deep within 'This time and every time, I was the code I needed to find my way back.'
'With sure formal dexterity and an exciting precision of lyrical imagining, Baafi explores the complicated pathways of suspicion and uncertainty, and - most vitally - the simultaneous possibilities of threat and beauty, mistrust and hope, darkness and joy. The knowing narrative detail is charged as strongly with ideas as with feeling, resulting in a highly original fusion of resistance and compassionate determination.' Jane Draycott
'In this wise-hearted and deft debut, Baafi gets to the grain of family, inheritance, the grit of growing up and the grappling to become oneself.' Rachel Long
'Isabelle Baafi's Chaotic Good is a debut of amazing endurance. Its formal pressures create a kind of kaleidoscopic intensity that - with each turn of the chamber - brings newly beautiful and painful shapes into focus.' Will Harris
'Chaotic Good offers beautiful, urgent poems to remake our breaking world. From the playground all the way to the marriage bed, these redemption songs return to heal and emancipate.' alice hiller
SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION
A piercing debut about how we are made, how we get lost and how we find new selves.
Framed by the story of escape from a toxic marriage, Chaotic Good focuses on the incremental ways in which power accumulates, shifts and is relinquished within both home and community. Incisive, rigorous and artful, Isabelle Baafi reminds us of the importance of self-determination, and how, when we feel most eroded, we might discover what we need deep within 'This time and every time, I was the code I needed to find my way back.'
'With sure formal dexterity and an exciting precision of lyrical imagining, Baafi explores the complicated pathways of suspicion and uncertainty, and - most vitally - the simultaneous possibilities of threat and beauty, mistrust and hope, darkness and joy. The knowing narrative detail is charged as strongly with ideas as with feeling, resulting in a highly original fusion of resistance and compassionate determination.' Jane Draycott
'In this wise-hearted and deft debut, Baafi gets to the grain of family, inheritance, the grit of growing up and the grappling to become oneself.' Rachel Long
'Isabelle Baafi's Chaotic Good is a debut of amazing endurance. Its formal pressures create a kind of kaleidoscopic intensity that - with each turn of the chamber - brings newly beautiful and painful shapes into focus.' Will Harris
'Chaotic Good offers beautiful, urgent poems to remake our breaking world. From the playground all the way to the marriage bed, these redemption songs return to heal and emancipate.' alice hiller
118 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 8, 2025
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103 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 9, 2025
You know when you read a line of poetry so beautiful it sends shivers up your spine and leaves you a little giddy? That happened to me several times reading this book. The author puts unexpected words to experiences in a way that really gets to the heart of the feelings behind them.
These poems take place during different times in her life, spanning childhood, a tumultuous adolescence and her eventual divorce. I think the poems set during her teen years will particularly resonate with women. She deftly explores the experience of growing up and exploring her own sexuality while simultaneously experiencing unwanted sexualization by others. Some of the poems look back on these experiences with a mature wisdom while others immerse the reader fully in the moment.
But my favourite poems are those at the end of the collection, as we meet the writer in real time and watch her step into her own identity. While the beautiful poems in the beginning and middle of the book are rooted in trauma, the collection ends on a hopeful note.
I definitely recommend this collection to poetry readers and I can’t wait to read more from this writer!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book.
These poems take place during different times in her life, spanning childhood, a tumultuous adolescence and her eventual divorce. I think the poems set during her teen years will particularly resonate with women. She deftly explores the experience of growing up and exploring her own sexuality while simultaneously experiencing unwanted sexualization by others. Some of the poems look back on these experiences with a mature wisdom while others immerse the reader fully in the moment.
But my favourite poems are those at the end of the collection, as we meet the writer in real time and watch her step into her own identity. While the beautiful poems in the beginning and middle of the book are rooted in trauma, the collection ends on a hopeful note.
I definitely recommend this collection to poetry readers and I can’t wait to read more from this writer!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book.
March 5, 2025
Isabelle Baafi chronicles the breakdown of her marriage and uncovers the marks of adolescent trauma in this incisive, fresh debut. Baafi plays with chronologies and tests the capacity of poetic form as she interrogates her own past. Through five deeply felt sections that magnify slices of time, she excavates the pieces of memory that make up a life.
January 28, 2025
This is exactly the type of poetry that I’m always looking for and love to read. With themes of love and identity shaped by our life’s experiences, this collection was perfectly personal and intimate. I feel connected to Isabelle Baafi in a way that makes me trust in the takeaways she left me. The poetic technique is outstanding with craftsmanship that begs to be explored for my own personal poetic pursuits. I loved how each poem is rich with vivid imagery and unique concepts. This collection is at the top of my all time list with poems I know I’ll return to time and time again.
April 17, 2025
2.5 just didn’t do much for me
September 6, 2025
"This poem is a lie/waxing true."
As its title might imply, this collection brims with contradiction and nervous energy, demonstrating the range of effects that can be evoked by autobiographical, or at least distinctly personal, poetry. Some are serious commentaries on predatory relationships and gendered social expectations, like "The Bystander Effect", while "The Kuleshov Effect" turns its lens inward to examine how its speaker views themselves. I'm not usually fond of long poems constructed out of short lines, a structure that I feel can often inhibit the rhythm of verse, but "hotboxing" uses three such columns of verse to a page, breathlessly telling a story in a slangy and forceful style that complements the page-filling layout of this piece. Or you might find its complete opposite in "My mother calls", which is so minimalist it could easily have come off as trite, yet somehow lands a thoughtful emotional punch when placed in the context of Baafi's wider examination of identity and memory.
All of this culminates in "Sankofa", a piece which draws on the name-and-age format of online confessionals ("...I go back to save you (21) from yourself..."). It embraces the sense of intimate disclosure that CHAOTIC GOOD deploys to exquisite effect, while also keeping a lighthearted sense of distance, this device calling attention to the performative side inherent in such disclosures, which Baafi meticulously anatomises through poems named for various scientific and technical effects, placing a capstone on the agility and wit that defines this collection.
As its title might imply, this collection brims with contradiction and nervous energy, demonstrating the range of effects that can be evoked by autobiographical, or at least distinctly personal, poetry. Some are serious commentaries on predatory relationships and gendered social expectations, like "The Bystander Effect", while "The Kuleshov Effect" turns its lens inward to examine how its speaker views themselves. I'm not usually fond of long poems constructed out of short lines, a structure that I feel can often inhibit the rhythm of verse, but "hotboxing" uses three such columns of verse to a page, breathlessly telling a story in a slangy and forceful style that complements the page-filling layout of this piece. Or you might find its complete opposite in "My mother calls", which is so minimalist it could easily have come off as trite, yet somehow lands a thoughtful emotional punch when placed in the context of Baafi's wider examination of identity and memory.
All of this culminates in "Sankofa", a piece which draws on the name-and-age format of online confessionals ("...I go back to save you (21) from yourself..."). It embraces the sense of intimate disclosure that CHAOTIC GOOD deploys to exquisite effect, while also keeping a lighthearted sense of distance, this device calling attention to the performative side inherent in such disclosures, which Baafi meticulously anatomises through poems named for various scientific and technical effects, placing a capstone on the agility and wit that defines this collection.
July 15, 2025
for me this was a bit of a mixed bag, the first few sections of the book were great but the latter few weren’t as good for me.
the descriptions are all so vivid and on a line based level some of the poems are beautifully put.
a lot of the poems are powerful and show easy meaning, again more so nearer the start.
(i didn’t read on kindle but gr doesn’t yet list a pb copy with the correct cover option.)
the descriptions are all so vivid and on a line based level some of the poems are beautifully put.
a lot of the poems are powerful and show easy meaning, again more so nearer the start.
(i didn’t read on kindle but gr doesn’t yet list a pb copy with the correct cover option.)
September 28, 2025
I will never have this much control over any language in my entire life and I am in awe that someone could ever be. thoroughly enjoyable.
October 27, 2025
I liked the poems in the final section Rebirth the best.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews