The poems in Throug resume David Herd's inquiry into the language of public space taken up in All Just (2012). Here, five extended texts address the ways in which contemporary public language has been rendered officially hostile. Considering the risks that such official hostility poses to human intimacy, Through sets out to register broken affections, to re-explore possibilities of solidarity and trust. Countering the enclosures of public discourse, the poems embrace instead 'a language in transition', one in which meaning is multiple, 'echoing into place a genuine and subsisting relationship'.
David Herd is a poet, critic, and teacher. His collections of poetry include All Just (Carcanet 2012), Outwith (Bookthug 2012), and Through (Carcanet 2016), and his recent writings on the politics of human movement have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Parallax and Almost Island. He is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent, has worked with Kent Refugee Help since 2009, and is a coordinator of Refugee Tales.