Under the Blue: Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize

by Suzannah V. Evans

Bloomsbury presents Under the Blue, written and read by Suzannah V. Evans.

'Breath-taking . . . Evans brings forensic observation and brave grace to turbulent waters and the infinitesimal rituals of care' NANCY CAMPBELL

'Evans hears the world around her like no one else; she paces from beauty to agony and back without missing a step' NOREEN MASUD

'Balances a hypnotically dreamy and filmic vision with a precise and unsentimental lyric voice' POLLY ATKIN
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From the multi-award-winning a new collection of soaring lyricism and desire, exploring the act of care and the consequences of loving

Under the Blue is an arresting, deeply candid exploration of both the shimmering beauty of life and the realities of care.

Through a series of glittering fragmental prose poems and evocative postcards, Suzannah V. Evans has produced a kaleidoscopic meditation grounded by profound humanity and empathy – about intimacy and togetherness, sickness and pain, what can be said and what remains unsayable.

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'Catches us in the complexity of pleasure and pain that is being bodies in this world' PHOEBE POWER

'Understated, true and wise ... A poetic waterlog buoyed by the rhythms of love' ISABEL GALLEYMORE

Genres: Poetry

Audible Audio

Published September 11, 2025

Reviews

[Sophie Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Picnic' and 'Postcard on a Blue Day' are my two favourites of this collection, but the entirety of the collection is amazing. As someone who also was a caretaker for a relative and burnt out, having this collection speak about something that doesn't tend to get talked about enough was just gratifying. It felt so nice to hear someone say 'I hear you, I understand, it wasn't your fault you burnt out, they don't blame you' and I think we need to talk more about family members being caretakers and offering them support to deal with the guilt that comes with burning out.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This gold / is your colour. Light falls / on your name. I am blue / beside you as you read.” As a longtime admirer of Suzannah V. Evans (through her pamphlets with Guillemot Press, Brightwork and Marine Objects / Some Language), I had high hopes for her debut collection; Under the Blue met and burst through them. From the Woolf and Baudelaire epigraphs we are thrown into a world of feeling: a series of prose poems set largely in and around the sea set the tone, the fragility of the body in the world and the necessity of interdependence to survival. At the other end of the collection, a series of verse-poems-as-letters; but between them the highlight, the ‘Postcards from Jasper Street’ sequence. Opening with a reference to the Ship of Theseus and an Annie Ernaux epigraph, the prose poems that follow are largely about care: the cost and the pain of it, its rewards, the felt imperative to give it freely to those we love in stark juxtaposition with the difficulty of it. Unsurprisingly I was thinking of Bluets, another text that uses form to engage with questions of care. But Evans is never derivative or bound to any other work or references, not even the visual art that crops up throughout. “All of us with our boxes of pain, all stacked within each other, a box in a box in a box. I hold my mother's hand.”; “I think about how much needs to be articulated […] the degree to which my mother has to explain […] Singing nerves and words, words, words.”; “yes, it's hard to bear, it's hard to be a witness to what is too terrible for words, for linear sentences, it's hard to see it in my mother's face and in my father's, it's hard to feel pain lapping at the dining table and it's hard to hear crying in the night and it's hard to hear the metronome of my mother's voice stuck and looping on a single word as she channels the pain into language, yes it is, / [repeat]”. Under the Blue is a sincere and skilfully crafted reflection on the unsung expressions of love that define a life lived amongst other people.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as a student on the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize module 2026

My favourite of the long list so far - review to come 🤍🌊

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this poetry collection – the author’s first– due to its longlisting for the 2026 Dylan Thomas Prize, a prize for authors writing in English aged 39 and under (Thomas himself having died at that age) which is open to novels, short story collections, poetry collections and plays – one of three poetry collections this year.
 
I must admit poetry is not my preferred literary medium so that this is normally the only time of the year that I would read it – but in this case I felt very much at home with the book as, other than it and the author’s self-identification as poetry/poet, I felt like it was more of a novella albeit one written in fragmentary and elusive prose.
 
It divides into three distinct sections. 
 
The first and most prose like (as well as most image filled) – is a series of vignettes from a holiday the narrator has taken with her male partner D (and I believe girl-friend B) on the Portugese Atlantic island of Madeira, complete with imagery of waves, rocks, seapools, a walk along a levada (irrigation channel) and a visit to Seixal beach.
 

Which sounds like seashell, or rather say shall. When we get there, it is spitting with rain, and clouds descend over the verdant mountainside. The sand is black and soft. A whole beach of crushed Oreos.

 
The second and most affecting is a series of date postcards: from December 2021 to May 2022.  Saturated with imagery from artworks and exhibitions (attributed in some closing Notes) the story at its heart is of the narrator’s occasional and her father’s full time, often care for her mother (I believe – from an angry postcard about the medical establishment’s apparent indifference to the Epstein-Barr virus) a Multiple Sclerosis sufferer – a situation which is often harrowing for the carer and for her mother.
 

'All my nerves are singing. My mother is lying in bed with the lamp on above her, and in the dim light it looks as if she has no eyelashes. Her eyes are panicked, roaming the room. 'All my nerves are singing! I hold her hand. I'll have a sip of water. I take the glass from the bedside table and place the straw by her mouth. The catheter at her leg is full, and I hook it up to a bag in the bin to drain it, lifting her leg down from its pillow, talking as I move. 'It helps when you say what you're doing. I think about how much needs to be articulated, all the time, the degree to which my mother has to explain, instruct, request - and with Precision. Singing nerves and words, words, words.

 
The third – most (for me) conventionally poetry like and most moving is a series of letter-in-verse to her partner, mother, father, sister (and to the early 20thCentury landscape artist Laura Knight) – letters which link both the first two sections.
 

You, pedalling your arms
above your head in bed,
that bad arm
suddenly mobile and flexible ……
You, with the ellipses
of your emails. Your strong
front crawl. Your assertive
gestures as you motion
through talk.
Now, when I swim, the movement of my arms
is for you. A high arc
fingertips cleaving bright.
Shuddering kick of legs.
The sea pool in Seixal
is for you. Craggy rocks
and my head dipped below.

 
Beautiful.

[James Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly beautiful book of contemporary poetry. Honest and clear-eyed and deftly attuned to the small, too-easily-forgotten moments that say so much about our lives.

Revelatory of the hidden worlds of health and care that are usually kept private through what is said and not said. There is pain, and frustration, and discomfort (both physical and emotional) there, but also love, and warmth, and an expansive understanding of human feeling.

A bolt of cobalt blue brilliance.

[Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le pondría un 3.5 pero estoy intentando ser menos generosa con mis notas este año.
Con tanto azul, tanto mar y tantos mommy issues, casi me parece imposible que no me haya fascinado. Pero es bueno, objetivamente.

[Julie Atherton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and lyrical