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The Book of Jonah: A Telegraph Book of the Year
‘Kennard’s distinctive voice – surreal, funny, anxious, always overthinking, and cringingly self-deprecating – has made him one of the most widely liked and imitated British poets’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, TLS
A Telegragh, Irish Times, Guardian and The Week Book of the Year
None of the Old Testament prophets were especially happy or confident in their calling, but Jonah was the only one who rejected it outright, disobeying direct instruction from God and literally running away. In The Book of Jonah, Luke Kennard transforms the unique and awkward position Jonah’s story occupies in scripture – part dream, part joke, part provocation – into a madcap picaresque which marries the sacred and the absurd.
Though Jonah’s encounter with the whale is most commonly interpreted as the story of a reluctant prophet being punished by his maker, Kennard’s Jonah is more wily business traveller than seer. Taking his instruction instead from non-governmental organizations, arts development agencies and public-relations gurus, this Jonah keeps relentlessly busy, accepting any assignment that will take him further away from Nineveh and drown out the word of God in his ears. On his travels he meets errant writers, fixers, artists and consultants, but nobody who can give him a sense of what his work might be beyond a five-star capitalist purgatory in a series of exotic locations. What would it mean to be a prophet – or even a false prophet – in this milieu?
Taking on the decimation of funding for the arts, the emptiness of the hero’s journey and a literary culture regarded by wider society with cynicism, ignorance and apathy, The Book of Jonah is a blistering poetry collection from the Forward Prize-winning author of Notes on the Sonnets.
'Brilliant . . . Deadly serious in the way only the playfully comic can be, the poems here are liable to leave you both smiling and wincing in the same breath' – Rishi Dastidar, Telegraph
'A fun, testing read – rather like being regaled at the pub by a tipsy Theology professor' – Telegraph, Books of the Year
A Telegragh, Irish Times, Guardian and The Week Book of the Year
None of the Old Testament prophets were especially happy or confident in their calling, but Jonah was the only one who rejected it outright, disobeying direct instruction from God and literally running away. In The Book of Jonah, Luke Kennard transforms the unique and awkward position Jonah’s story occupies in scripture – part dream, part joke, part provocation – into a madcap picaresque which marries the sacred and the absurd.
Though Jonah’s encounter with the whale is most commonly interpreted as the story of a reluctant prophet being punished by his maker, Kennard’s Jonah is more wily business traveller than seer. Taking his instruction instead from non-governmental organizations, arts development agencies and public-relations gurus, this Jonah keeps relentlessly busy, accepting any assignment that will take him further away from Nineveh and drown out the word of God in his ears. On his travels he meets errant writers, fixers, artists and consultants, but nobody who can give him a sense of what his work might be beyond a five-star capitalist purgatory in a series of exotic locations. What would it mean to be a prophet – or even a false prophet – in this milieu?
Taking on the decimation of funding for the arts, the emptiness of the hero’s journey and a literary culture regarded by wider society with cynicism, ignorance and apathy, The Book of Jonah is a blistering poetry collection from the Forward Prize-winning author of Notes on the Sonnets.
'Brilliant . . . Deadly serious in the way only the playfully comic can be, the poems here are liable to leave you both smiling and wincing in the same breath' – Rishi Dastidar, Telegraph
'A fun, testing read – rather like being regaled at the pub by a tipsy Theology professor' – Telegraph, Books of the Year
- GenresPoetry
155 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 4, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 6, 2025
"Jonah is either a weaponised fairy tale or a re-enchanted history."
We all know the story of Jonah, or at least its main highlight: a prophet gets eaten by a fish. But THE BOOK OF JONAH fragments and adapts this Old Testament narrative, juxtaposing contradictory images of the prophet or recasting him as a wanderer in the modern media landscape, struggling to make sense of a life lived in hotels and swanky conferences. At its best, Kennard's poems are sensitive to the theological and social implications of this story: what does it mean for a prophet to reject his calling, or for his audience to respond far more enthusiastically than expected? And how does that change at a time when promotion and persuasion manipulate life's every aspect? Blending satire and surreally fragmented images, Kennard's most successful pieces—"Expolitio/Exergasia", "Écrivains Sans Frontières", "aller en bateau" and the "Lectures"—challenge our presumptions about life in an idea-saturated age.
However, this emphasis on combining varied and jarring images also leads to a number of poems that feel like they lose the thread of the story of Jonah, or lean into strange images for their own sake (a particularly jarring element when placed against the level of technical detail Kennard employs in citing different theological authorities). The result is thus sometimes distracting, bogging down the length of this collection.
We all know the story of Jonah, or at least its main highlight: a prophet gets eaten by a fish. But THE BOOK OF JONAH fragments and adapts this Old Testament narrative, juxtaposing contradictory images of the prophet or recasting him as a wanderer in the modern media landscape, struggling to make sense of a life lived in hotels and swanky conferences. At its best, Kennard's poems are sensitive to the theological and social implications of this story: what does it mean for a prophet to reject his calling, or for his audience to respond far more enthusiastically than expected? And how does that change at a time when promotion and persuasion manipulate life's every aspect? Blending satire and surreally fragmented images, Kennard's most successful pieces—"Expolitio/Exergasia", "Écrivains Sans Frontières", "aller en bateau" and the "Lectures"—challenge our presumptions about life in an idea-saturated age.
However, this emphasis on combining varied and jarring images also leads to a number of poems that feel like they lose the thread of the story of Jonah, or lean into strange images for their own sake (a particularly jarring element when placed against the level of technical detail Kennard employs in citing different theological authorities). The result is thus sometimes distracting, bogging down the length of this collection.
January 4, 2026
Four and a half stars
There is some great poetry in here. Some of the poems, I feel, go on a bit. It starts off strongly but falters a little in the middle.
There is some great poetry in here. Some of the poems, I feel, go on a bit. It starts off strongly but falters a little in the middle.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews