Kingdomland

by Rachael Allen

Kingdomland is the debut poetry collection of Rachael Allen - a writer of rare vision and flair. The world she creates is suffused with surreal images and uncanny incidents. Unexplained violences and strange metamorphoses take shape in the 'glowering dusk'. And yet, all too clearly, we recognise life here on earth, its everyday griefs, dysfunctions and injustices. Where distinctions between murder and bloodletting, corruption and consumption are blurred. Where a pet tarantula or mimic octopus might find itself beside glands and processed meats. Landscapes shift and identities dissolve: 'the red bricks of the day' exist 'in a woman's chest', a human presence is 'embedded in the walls'. All appears changed, but familiar.

Intercut with oblique verse fragments and a series of linked sequences, Allen blends elements of fiction and ekphrasis to create a haunting and unforgettable debut.

Genres: Poetry, Contemporary

73 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2019

Reviews

[Steven Edmondson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is - and this is neither an insult nor a compliment - the 'Ryan Gosling's Lost River' of debut Faber poetry collections. The tone this has - mashing up weird and uncanny violence with the violent mundane - is to my mind exactly the same.

Will need to revisit this one. For a lot of them i was just like 'well then' and put it down. But I did like it, liked the way it felt like.. the sense of place the poems sketch out.. match the strange, heightened emotional states it covers, has an emotional topography vibe.


EDIT: I did re-read it. It's great. Increasingly think it among the most striking collections i've read in recent years. Jacket's a nice colour as well.

[Serge ♆ Neptune · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favourite poems: Tower of Masks, Landscape for a Dead Woman, Banshee and all the 'narrow' poems without titles.

[VG · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have been on a poetry kick for a while now, and have read some fantastic collections. For me, this was not one of them. Poetry is so much about personal taste, and mine leans towards the lyrical yet personal, each word chosen to compliment the whole. Metaphors are a beautiful device, when used sparingly. Here, the writing leans more towards ‘stream of consciousness’ and surrealism, with repeated words, too many metaphors and sentences lacking in flow, making the poems feel disjointed. I just didn’t feel a connection to this book, which is vital for me with poetry.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOVED the water imagery to describe girlhood! will need to reread again at some point.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark,haunting, visceral. Real but unreal. Like all good poetry I'll need to return again after a while.

[Karolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good debut by Rachael Allen, with slightly burnt edges; the first part was laboured heavily, but certainly in search of a unique voice, some edge that would establish her identity, all essential work to evolve her vision. Frankly, the second half carried the entire collection for me. Loved Nights of Poor Sleep and Landscape for a Dead Woman , which especially stood out, laying out a possibility for continuation of her poetic world view that would develop in her second collection.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obviously subjective but I try to rate by how much I actually enjoy a book, and this just wasn't for me. I later looked it up and read part of an interview where the poet said they were inspired by horror films and I can absolutely see that in this work, and would probably have not read if I had known before reading! I wasn't a fan of the horroresque images and I struggled to follow many of the poems and keep my attention from wandering. Had a fairly high emotional reaction, which I suppose is something, but the reaction was mostly aversion.
Favourite poems were Morning Defeats, Sweet n Low (hints of veganism?), and Monstrous Horses ((?) Monstrous Houses??) which had the lines "a great lemon / in place of my heart / a start".

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, I didn't like this. It felt laboured, like it was trying extremely hard to seem mysterious and layered without actually containing much of substance. There's the usual themes and imagery of women's bodies, sex and gender, violence; but nothing that hasn't been done before or better by other poets in other collections.
Just a real [sad trumpet noise] of a collection.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

Had a sly reread this evening. She holds up marvellously. Macabre emphasis was felt more this time and I really appreciate that ta



--------
Lots of love for the review that describes this as having 'too many metaphors'
Cheers Rachael you are an inspiration a delight

[Aaron Facer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some great poems in this collection, and Allen definitely has a sure sense of her own voice. The poems 'The Indigo Field', 'Prairie Burning', 'The Slim Man' and 'Banshee' really stood out to me, as well as the series of untitled poems that lace through the collection really wonderfully. The surreality of the book is great - sometimes funny, often a little disturbing (which I don't mind too much).

But, unfortunately, I found myself thinking something that I thought at times when reading passages of 'The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem' - what is the significance of what I'm reading? I'm definitely not saying that there was none, only that it was lost on me in this reading of the collection. I suppose an anthology like 'The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem' has the advantage of having a range of poets and styles, so my impression could change in a little more from page to page. But with this, there were just times that I felt like I was reading something just for the sake of running my eyes over the words, and I really wanted more than that. But as a whole, I think the collection is impressive. The reoccurring images of burning forests, fields, prairies, the sea and dead flesh all seem to build up together into a narrative of sorts. I only realised this right at the end of the collection - and it hit me like a tonne of bricks - so perhaps I would get much more out of this collection with a reread. I hope it grows on me with age.

[Emily Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark. 3.6

This one took me a while to get into, but once you get into it, you’re into it. Favourites were Simple Men, What a summer we had, You look unwell my dear, And the face in the mirror no longer familiar, Sweet n’ low, Untitled (intestinal scorching), Untitled (I didn’t earn any adulthood), Untitles (I bundle my sister), Banshee, Untitled (the sea flames).

My main points of criticism for the collection—as with most surrealist poetry—is that it can lean too gimmicky if it’s not done in a way that feels genuine, or too pushed. I could mostly see the through line in how her mind jumped from image to image but there were some that didn’t quite land for me, like in Morning Defeats, the constellation to the cucumber... The meat imagery also got a little too much air time. Also had questions about how Rachael chose to order the poems in this collection? I feel like it could have been better organised, the way it is feels a bit like you’re watching a tennis match.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I am walking towards a level crossing, / while someone I love is jogging into the darkness. / Come away from there, I am yelling, / while the black dog rolls in the twilit yard.” I bought Rachael Allen’s Kingdomland in January, but every time I picked it up or thought about picking it up something held me back each time, usually at the first poem, a kind of intuition. I read it last night in a state of awe and agony, every line resonant for one reason or another. As the end of the year approaches I found myself thinking of Fiona Benson’s Vertigo & Ghost, which I read right at the beginning of the year, another collection of white hot righteous rage in excellently crafted poems. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours ruminating, and this is the line I keep coming back to: “why will no one put themselves through that for me?”

[Ameythist Moreland · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Landscape for a Dead Woman"

“To be beautiful


and powerful enough


for someone


to want to break me

                                     up

into syndicated ripples.




Later I’ll try


to rise from these dead.”

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection, but not as much as I'd hoped. Some of the poems feel a bit laboured and overcomplicated - potentially more how the poet feels poetry should be and the right level of off-the-boil to odd to be modern and artsy - than it would be if it had naturally flowed. I liked poems at the beginning and end of the collection, but it lost some of its feeling in the middle. I'd be interested to see where Allen goes from here.

[Kali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eerie and unnerving, brimming with disquieting, highly inventive imagery. I enjoyed this collection a lot and often found myself lingering over poems rather than charging through it. 4 stars because I occasionally had no idea what was going on, but I'll reread this soon and expect it might swell to 5.

[zara meadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars but I’m not surprised. I had read about this collection online and to me it sounded exactly like the kind of poetry i love to read (and write). The imagery is completely surreal, the metaphor is thick and weighty, this is absolutely fantastic and fucked-up in every wonderful way.

[‎‧₊˚n o e l l e˚₊‧]

rating poetry feels like a cop out, so i won’t. this horror-macabre film of girlhood feels correct to me, and i enjoyed it overall, but most of the poems did not sink in with me like some poems do. i’d recommend this to someone who might like poetry with those themes in it still

[✰matthew✰ · Rating 2 out of 5]

i didn’t get this one, probably me more than the writing. there just seemed to be a lot of random things jumbled together that i couldn’t make much sense of. lots of metaphors and random descriptions but only a couple caught my attention and/or made me think.

[Madeleine Coussens · Rating 4 out of 5]

a solid 4.5/5

Some really beautiful detailed sections and nice mixes from longer pieces to one page. Will be picking this back up in the near future to glean more beauty from it.

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Narcissistic man-hater obsessed with her own anatomy forgot to put poetry in her poetry collection. Honestly, it could happen to anyone.

[Erica Stannard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me. Unreachable.

[Emma Filtness · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vibrant and weird and surprising.

[Ali Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was pretty good for a first collection! Lots of imagery and easy to read.

[Lyn Lockwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing poetry, muscular, funny, earthy - very memorable. Great story telling and wisdom.

[hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immensely talented, but the poems just didn’t resonate with me in the way I hoped.

[Rory Gilmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary, sad, violent and beautiful. I really really enjoyed it and will return to it many times more I’m sure.

[Jillian]

I can’t rate this. It’s unfair to give a low rating to something so completely over my head. Not in my wheelhouse whatsoever. I was not taken with any of the poems.

[Otone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poetry is a very individual taste, and I can't say this collection was to mine.

[Angela]

my mouth a spell of light
what's going on out there

Read in a sitting at the Gothic Bookshop, Durham NC.

[anon · Rating 4 out of 5]

was going to be a three but that last section rlly convinced me killer