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More Sky
More Sky is a remarkable and remarkably various debut collection from Eric Gregory Award winner, Joe Carrick-Varty, tracking the ways in which experience of addiction and domestic violence shape a life.
Carrick-Varty approaches difficult material with great skill and poise: here we find stunning individual lyrics, with an eye for the vivid and surreal; surprising sequences which use Buddhism and Greek myth and the life of coral to refract the poems' interests; and the astonishing sixty-three page long poem ‘sky doc’ which meditates on suicide, and its retrospective haunting of every corner of its speaker’s life.
Carrick-Varty approaches difficult material with great skill and poise: here we find stunning individual lyrics, with an eye for the vivid and surreal; surprising sequences which use Buddhism and Greek myth and the life of coral to refract the poems' interests; and the astonishing sixty-three page long poem ‘sky doc’ which meditates on suicide, and its retrospective haunting of every corner of its speaker’s life.
- GenresPoetry
132 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 26, 2023
2 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Joe Carrick Varty
4 books5 followersJoe Carrick-Varty is a British-Irish poet, writer and founding editor of bath magg. His work has appeared in New Statesman, Granta, POETRY, The Poetry Review, The Forward Book of Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review and Poetry London. He is the author of More Sky (Carcanet Press, 2023), 54 Questions for the Man Who Sold a Shotgun to My Father (Out-Spoken Press, 2020) and Somewhere Far (The Poetry Business, 2019). In 2018 he won the New Poets Prize and in 2022 he won an Eric Gregory Award. Joe is currently the 2023 Anthony Burgess Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 21, 2023
In this debut collection by an Eric Gregory Award-winning poet, his father’s suicide is ever-present – and not just in poems like “54 Questions for the Man Who Sold a Shotgun to My Father” but in seemingly unrelated pieces that start off being about something else. Everything comes around to the reality of a neglectful, alcoholic father and the sordid flat he inhabited before his death. Carrick-Varty alternates between an intimate “you” address and third-person scenarios, auditioning coping mechanisms. His frame of reference is wide: football, rappers, Buddhist cosmology. Some poems are printed sideways up the page; there are stanzas, paragraphs and columns. The word “suicide” itself is repeated to the point where it loses meaning, becoming just a sibilant collection of syllables (as in “From the Perspective of Coral,” where “suicide” is substituted for sea creatures, or the long culminating poem, “sky doc,” in which every stanza opens with “Once upon a time when suicide was…”) The tone is often bitter, as is to be expected, but there is joy in the deft use of language.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
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December 15, 2023real professional work & of course a heavy number on joe's dad's suicide. also I think interesting with what's roughly (very roughly ) happening with something like the ingerlish suburban-pastoral, thinking especially of zaffar... anyway much to wow here & I will return
really struck by the image - swimming pool lowered into skyscraper by six cranes
really struck by the image - swimming pool lowered into skyscraper by six cranes
March 21, 2023
A moving piece of work that is cleverly crafted. I highly recommend it.
August 7, 2024
One of the best collections I’ve ever read. The subject matter is heavy - domestic violence, addiction and suicide - but it is an incredible debut collection. It’s all about being a witness and how that stays with you from childhood to adulthood, even when the perpetrator is gone.
February 10, 2023
This is some powerful stuff. I think I forgot to breathe during my reading of the final and longest poem, sky doc. Full of beautiful imagery and poignant observations with a strong poetic voice. Both sad and uplifting. Incredible.
April 12, 2023
More Sky is an absolute monster of a debut collection. I'd be totally stunned if it doesn't clear up in the various awards for the best poetry collections and debut collections of the year.
The book is primarily about Carrick-Varty's father, who could charitably be described as a 'character'. The poems explore alcohol abuse/addiction, mental health issues, domestic violence, family breakdown and suicide.
The collection is also focused on Joe's upbringing, being the son of the father, and the impact of his father's actions and behavior on Joe, and, to a lesser extent, his mother and sister (sunglasses covering the mother’s eyes are a common motif).
The speaker of the poems is quite distant from his father. There are a few 'warm' moments but more often the father is a ghost, walking the streets without shoes on his feet.
Each poem, and the collection as a whole, gets into your head and stays with you a long time after reading. In particular the word/idea of suicide, which is repeated maybe a hundred times. But we are not clearly told who (if anyone) commits suicide, although there are hints of the father with a shotgun in a park. My understanding is Joe's father is alive, and so the theme of suicide becomes (amongst other things) a metaphor for a slow death through drinking, and the book becomes an elegy for someone who is physically alive but has already become a ghost to those around them.
The poems in the collection were written over a seven year period and cover instances from Carrick-Varty's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. I’d rate 95% of the poems as 9/10 or 10/10. The four or five poems that are not as strong are still a respectable 6 or 7 out of 10. There's not a single bad poem here and the majority are jaw droppingly brilliant.
The last poem, 'sky doc', is, I believe, the newest poem, and takes up half the book. Each page repeats the same opening refrain (“Once upon a time when suicide…”) and the long poem covers the themes of the first half of the book in a much more direct way, exposing us head on to the father's regular drunkenness and occasional abuse of Joe and his mother. This section is more visceral, the speaker more demanding of answers, and it caps off the collection without tying all the motifs, refrains and contemplations of the book into a bow.
There are nods to Buddhism in the book, which made me think of the serenity prayer, and act as a welcome contrast to the chaos of the samsara-like cycle of drunkenness and shame of the daily world Joe’s father inhabits. One significant motif in the book is of islands being formed, perhaps representing the separation of Joe, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, from his father. In 'sky doc' the islands become reefs, perhaps hinting at a rebirth as Joe matures and realizes he does not need to become his father but has his own individual identity and path in life?
The book reminded me in places of work by Wayne Holloway Smith, Mathew Dickman and Gboyega Odubanjo, but was strongest when it was Joe's voice clearly shining through.
There's very little traditional form poetry but there are a handful of poems which seem to have been born from workshops/prompts, which other poets could maybe take inspiration from. I was drawn to this collection more to see how the author could take such an honest, exposed view of his family, whilst building a world (building islands) within each poem, that is instantly recognisable as a small town UK upbringing (with betting shops, foxes and Hula Hoop crisps), but as abstract and surreal as a Bobby Parker poem.
The distance Joe creates is powerful. I believe his feelings towards his father are mixed. Love is there but it's stunted, and we are left not only grieving the slow death of a man through alcoholism but also the more sudden death (though still a death in many stages) of innocence, childhood, and normality for the author, as he clings to the ghosts of a nuclear family.
I think this book can best be summed up by the best line from it:
“O rain falling on the stillest lake that was all of our futures”.
('Ode to Shotgun')
The book is primarily about Carrick-Varty's father, who could charitably be described as a 'character'. The poems explore alcohol abuse/addiction, mental health issues, domestic violence, family breakdown and suicide.
The collection is also focused on Joe's upbringing, being the son of the father, and the impact of his father's actions and behavior on Joe, and, to a lesser extent, his mother and sister (sunglasses covering the mother’s eyes are a common motif).
The speaker of the poems is quite distant from his father. There are a few 'warm' moments but more often the father is a ghost, walking the streets without shoes on his feet.
Each poem, and the collection as a whole, gets into your head and stays with you a long time after reading. In particular the word/idea of suicide, which is repeated maybe a hundred times. But we are not clearly told who (if anyone) commits suicide, although there are hints of the father with a shotgun in a park. My understanding is Joe's father is alive, and so the theme of suicide becomes (amongst other things) a metaphor for a slow death through drinking, and the book becomes an elegy for someone who is physically alive but has already become a ghost to those around them.
The poems in the collection were written over a seven year period and cover instances from Carrick-Varty's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. I’d rate 95% of the poems as 9/10 or 10/10. The four or five poems that are not as strong are still a respectable 6 or 7 out of 10. There's not a single bad poem here and the majority are jaw droppingly brilliant.
The last poem, 'sky doc', is, I believe, the newest poem, and takes up half the book. Each page repeats the same opening refrain (“Once upon a time when suicide…”) and the long poem covers the themes of the first half of the book in a much more direct way, exposing us head on to the father's regular drunkenness and occasional abuse of Joe and his mother. This section is more visceral, the speaker more demanding of answers, and it caps off the collection without tying all the motifs, refrains and contemplations of the book into a bow.
There are nods to Buddhism in the book, which made me think of the serenity prayer, and act as a welcome contrast to the chaos of the samsara-like cycle of drunkenness and shame of the daily world Joe’s father inhabits. One significant motif in the book is of islands being formed, perhaps representing the separation of Joe, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, from his father. In 'sky doc' the islands become reefs, perhaps hinting at a rebirth as Joe matures and realizes he does not need to become his father but has his own individual identity and path in life?
The book reminded me in places of work by Wayne Holloway Smith, Mathew Dickman and Gboyega Odubanjo, but was strongest when it was Joe's voice clearly shining through.
There's very little traditional form poetry but there are a handful of poems which seem to have been born from workshops/prompts, which other poets could maybe take inspiration from. I was drawn to this collection more to see how the author could take such an honest, exposed view of his family, whilst building a world (building islands) within each poem, that is instantly recognisable as a small town UK upbringing (with betting shops, foxes and Hula Hoop crisps), but as abstract and surreal as a Bobby Parker poem.
The distance Joe creates is powerful. I believe his feelings towards his father are mixed. Love is there but it's stunted, and we are left not only grieving the slow death of a man through alcoholism but also the more sudden death (though still a death in many stages) of innocence, childhood, and normality for the author, as he clings to the ghosts of a nuclear family.
I think this book can best be summed up by the best line from it:
“O rain falling on the stillest lake that was all of our futures”.
('Ode to Shotgun')
December 3, 2023
This is a debut collection that is split into two sections. It is astonishingly mature work dealing with the loss of an alcoholic father to suicide and to a family history of suicide. It is split into two sections, the second of which - called sky doc - is almost one long poem.
I'm too tired to give it a long review but I found it excellent and some of it - based on family/friend experiences - really hit home.
I'm too tired to give it a long review but I found it excellent and some of it - based on family/friend experiences - really hit home.
November 16, 2024
Found this book at the TS Eliot Prize Readings earlier this year, where Joe Carrick-Varty read Dear Postie, I think. It's one of the first British contemporary poetry books I've read, and it reframed and renewed images that I often see in contemporary American poetry; guns, for instance. Every poem has been wonderful, although I especially liked "All my fathers are hunting dodos in the park" and "sky doc".
March 22, 2023
I found this book after hearing Joe at a live poetry reading in Manchester. Reading these poems after the event, i felt the same raw and vivid perspective on working class masculinity as I did in hearing it. Says a lot about how he is able to bring the image to life. Looking forward to his next book and any future events!
December 31, 2023
'Once upon a time when suicide was proof I was busy living
the day my dad took a shotgun to a field
I watched 4 hours of tennis
I would tell you the last thing he said to me
was honey please take the bins out
but I would be lying so strange
to put words in his mouth give him
honey instead of a bullet'
the day my dad took a shotgun to a field
I watched 4 hours of tennis
I would tell you the last thing he said to me
was honey please take the bins out
but I would be lying so strange
to put words in his mouth give him
honey instead of a bullet'
March 21, 2023
A thoughtful and sad anthology spattered with the subtle, endearing kind of humour you have to really look for, one you can only expect from a top writer. To which Joe is proving himself to be.
An amazing debut which should sit on all bookshelves.
An amazing debut which should sit on all bookshelves.
March 21, 2023
Heartfelt and moving, a stunning debut by JCV.
March 21, 2023
Thought provoking and powerful work! A good read and a strong debut from the author
March 21, 2023
The most beautiful and emotive series of poetry written by such an interesting writer
March 21, 2023
Powerful poetry from a promising young poet
June 9, 2023
Absolutely loved this, an honour and pleasure to read - it will stay with me for a long time
January 15, 2024
You can read my published review with DURA here: https://dura-dundee.org.uk/2024/01/14... (she wrote humbly).
July 3, 2025
Sky Doc was incredible, loved a few of the poems in the middle as well. It took me a bit of time to get into properly. 3.4
October 3, 2023
Love this collection.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews