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After The Formalities
A knife is pulled. An Uber driver is racially abused on the day of the Brexit referendum. A father bathes his son in ice water. A schoolboy drives a drawing pin into a map of the world. The threat of violence is never far away in Anthony Anaxagorou's breakthrough collection After the Formalities. Technically achieved, emotionally transformative and razor-sharp, these are poems that confront and contradict; poems in which the scholarly synthesises with the streetwise, and global histories are told through the lens of one family. Anaxagorou 'speaks against the darkness', tracking the male body under pressure from political and historical forces, and celebrates the precarious joy of parenthood. The title poem is a meditation on racism and race science that draws on the poet's Cypriot heritage and is as uncomfortable as it is virtuosic. Elsewhere, in a sequence of prose poems that shimmer with lyric grace, he writes, 'I'm your father & the only person keeping you alive.'
- GenresPoetryContemporary
108 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2019
6 people are currently reading
283 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Anaxagorou
18 books60 followersAnthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator.
His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Granta, Ambit, The Adroit Journal, The London Magazine, The Rialto and elsewhere. His poetry and fiction have appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts.
His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. It was selected as one of The Telegraph’s and The Guardian’s best poetry books of 2019 and shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize.
He was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow of the University of Roehampton.
Anthony is also artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music event held at London’s Southbank Centre, and is founder of Out-Spoken Press, an independent publisher of poetry and critical writing that aims to challenge the lack of diversity in British publishing.
He has toured extensively throughout Europe and Australia and his work has been studied in universities, schools and colleges across Europe and the USA.
His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Granta, Ambit, The Adroit Journal, The London Magazine, The Rialto and elsewhere. His poetry and fiction have appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts.
His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. It was selected as one of The Telegraph’s and The Guardian’s best poetry books of 2019 and shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize.
He was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow of the University of Roehampton.
Anthony is also artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music event held at London’s Southbank Centre, and is founder of Out-Spoken Press, an independent publisher of poetry and critical writing that aims to challenge the lack of diversity in British publishing.
He has toured extensively throughout Europe and Australia and his work has been studied in universities, schools and colleges across Europe and the USA.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 15, 2019
Smashing start, it gets a bit tiring towards the end and in the longer poems. Still, great collection.
Favourite poems: Cause, A Line of Simple inquiry, Things Already Lost, After the Formalities.
Favourite poems: Cause, A Line of Simple inquiry, Things Already Lost, After the Formalities.
September 22, 2021
This book includes what is now my favourite insult:
I've had toothbrushes
more complicated than you
you look like a social construct
on the scrap heap of history
I've had toothbrushes
more complicated than you
you look like a social construct
on the scrap heap of history
April 15, 2021
The BEST poetry collection I have read to date. No lie.
The creativity, uniqueness of expression, experimental forms - I'm in awe. Every page surprised me in some way.
The creativity, uniqueness of expression, experimental forms - I'm in awe. Every page surprised me in some way.
January 3, 2026
3.5 | favorite poems: four small indiscretions, after the formalities, uber, a line of simple inquiry.
my two main critiques are that sometimes the metaphors he used were a little too convoluted and the line breaks in some poems seemed odd. the poems about the diaspora and race spoke to me more than those about fatherhood, and i definitely enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second. looking forward to reading heritage aesthetics bc i think anaxagorou’s strength is speaking about race and otherness
my two main critiques are that sometimes the metaphors he used were a little too convoluted and the line breaks in some poems seemed odd. the poems about the diaspora and race spoke to me more than those about fatherhood, and i definitely enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second. looking forward to reading heritage aesthetics bc i think anaxagorou’s strength is speaking about race and otherness
January 12, 2023
kinda smash tho
February 6, 2020
As I have said many times I find reviewing poetry difficult. I am not equipped with the technical vocabulary for in-depth analysis. All I can do judge by how it makes me feel.
Sometimes a whole poem can draw me in, like ‘Sympathy for Rain’ does in this collection. Sometimes I can struggle with a poem but a single phrase or a couple of lines will stand out. Sometimes - I’m thinking of the Boris Pasternak collection I read recently - I struggle with the poems like they are a cryptic crossword or a work of abstract art. What, I ask, are you trying to say?
Reading this also reminded me that I used to think of poetry as separate lines and rhymes. Patterns to be replicated: haikus and sonnets. It has taken me some time to realise that something that looks like a block of prose can be poetry. How and why I still can’t exactly say. Perhaps just because that is what I am told it is. But poets use language differently, even as they write what looks like prose. It’s why ‘In Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept’ by Elizabeth Smart will also be a long poem to me, even though it looks like a novel.
All this preamble is a way for me to avoid outlining my detailed feelings about this collection. I enjoyed it, even though there is violence here and grief. There’s politics too. Can the modern poet write anything without touching on politics and identity? This collection fits in neatly between Jay Bernard’s ‘Surge’ and Roger Robinson’s ‘Portable Paradise’ to make a kind of unofficial trilogy. Or perhaps that is how I feel because I have read all three so closely together?
Anaxagorou’s work is razor sharp, smart and affecting. He twists the personal and the historical together intelligently.
“I am your father & the only person keeping you alive”
There’s poems about what it means to be both a parent and a child.
A fine collection. I just wish I had the words to do it justice.
Sometimes a whole poem can draw me in, like ‘Sympathy for Rain’ does in this collection. Sometimes I can struggle with a poem but a single phrase or a couple of lines will stand out. Sometimes - I’m thinking of the Boris Pasternak collection I read recently - I struggle with the poems like they are a cryptic crossword or a work of abstract art. What, I ask, are you trying to say?
Reading this also reminded me that I used to think of poetry as separate lines and rhymes. Patterns to be replicated: haikus and sonnets. It has taken me some time to realise that something that looks like a block of prose can be poetry. How and why I still can’t exactly say. Perhaps just because that is what I am told it is. But poets use language differently, even as they write what looks like prose. It’s why ‘In Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept’ by Elizabeth Smart will also be a long poem to me, even though it looks like a novel.
All this preamble is a way for me to avoid outlining my detailed feelings about this collection. I enjoyed it, even though there is violence here and grief. There’s politics too. Can the modern poet write anything without touching on politics and identity? This collection fits in neatly between Jay Bernard’s ‘Surge’ and Roger Robinson’s ‘Portable Paradise’ to make a kind of unofficial trilogy. Or perhaps that is how I feel because I have read all three so closely together?
Anaxagorou’s work is razor sharp, smart and affecting. He twists the personal and the historical together intelligently.
“I am your father & the only person keeping you alive”
There’s poems about what it means to be both a parent and a child.
A fine collection. I just wish I had the words to do it justice.
January 20, 2025
“Across the flyover a tower / crammed what hurt it knew / into a flame politicians pick / soundbites from out their crooked teeth / squinting at the brightness of a screen / our nation a slow animal / unable to digest any more meat.” There isn’t a single poem inside Anthony Anaxagorou’s breakthrough poetry collection After the Formalities that isn’t both artistically accomplished and emotionally striking. There’s such palpable yet restrained rage, both political and personal, balanced with such tenderness, an earnestness that can be difficult to pull off. Rage and grief are often closely bound up: “before Harvey Weinstein Tarana Burke / spoke smoke into a litany of nuns // before functionaries filled death ledgers / with names they mispronounced [...] the departure lounge was heavy / with pilots who no longer trusted the sky”. Much of the grief in the collection is familial, Anaxagorou’s grandmother presiding lovingly, painfully, over so many other losses and hurts, up to the waning innocence of a precocious child: “He wants to keep a leaf for a pet / I want to warn him about getting / attached to things already lost.” And then there’s the other spectre, such as in the titular poem, or in ‘A Line of Simple Inquiry’ — racism, its malevolent death-grip over England, especially in Brexit’s wake: “The famous public autopsy [...] But where really?” Anaxagorou is an incendiary poet, grappling fiercely with “the unfished ghosts of the sea”.
October 24, 2021
I would actually give this 4.5 stars if I could. I found it slightly impenetrable which is the only reason it doesn't get the full 5 stars, because this was an incredible collection. The writing made me feel so much emotion and conveyed so much. There was a violence, regret and an anger captured in a way I haven't seen before and which I loved. It felt very visceral. It also had sweet tasters of East London as the centre of where home is, which is how I feel. I had to just sit for 20 minutes after I'd finished to just take a minute to calm myself from all of the feelings that arose. I will definitely be going back to this collection repeatedly in future. I think it's total genius.
September 8, 2020
Anthony's gift for understanding and communicating that which is all too often unsaid is what sets him apart from, in my opinion, any other contemporary poet. Truth shimmers from every noble page of his work and I truly hope that he continues to produce poetry of this gravity for years to come.
To paraphrase one of his earlier works, poetry should be judged on its capacity to help, rather than being dissected in terms of form, meter etc. Anthony's poetry helps and that's all that matters.
PS, great use of line breaks ;)
To paraphrase one of his earlier works, poetry should be judged on its capacity to help, rather than being dissected in terms of form, meter etc. Anthony's poetry helps and that's all that matters.
PS, great use of line breaks ;)
November 14, 2020
Fantastic collection of poetry from Anthony Anaxagorou. I have gone back again to a couple and read them over and over. Particularly powerful are those that deal with the everyday racism in modern Britain, such as the title poem After The Formalities, and Uber. My favourite though was a tale involving Jeremy Corbyn making an appearance in the doctor's waiting room. A book of simmering tensions.
September 7, 2020
I think he’s a great poet but I found this book difficult to read. He’s better to watch as a word poet /artist. There were a lot of line breaks on the page to emphasise intonations in the speech, which wasn’t for me unfortunately.
February 10, 2022
This book is a form of protest(s) and also revolution. It shouts from inside itself and nothing about it exactly entertaining but necessary. In many ways, this wonderful collection is a case study of the survival of many.
November 11, 2022
A precise, grounded and stunning collection. Stopped me in my tracks. And, like a lot of good poetry, utterly and inscrutably transformative - saying all the nameless things that are so rarely said.
4.5 stars because many parts were 5 stars and some 3.7 stars.
4.5 stars because many parts were 5 stars and some 3.7 stars.
March 25, 2020
Anaxagorou eviscerates aspects of modern democratic Britain, whilst considering his heritage in the past, present and future.
January 30, 2021
A brilliant, incisive book by a poet whose formal gifts are various indeed. The poems demand to be read aloud. A delight.
January 30, 2022
WHEW, incredible collection. 4.5/5. Lost a bit of steam the last 20 or so pages. LOVE these poems.
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May 28, 2023would love to hear anthony anaxagorou slam poetry these poems to me
September 13, 2022
Very raw read
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September 17, 2022a really strong collection I'm glad I got to AA I'd like to see what he's producing with Granta soon
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews