Altar: Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

The debut poetry collection from award-winning writer and spoken word artist, Desree, Altar explores multifaceted dimensions of sacrifice, challenging its heroism and examining its ties to servility. The poems in Altar urge their protagonists to play neither lion nor lamb, but to live and flourish on their own terms. Each page glimmers with vivid, often devastating vignettes: we witness the resilience of youth, the strength of the Black female body, the complexity of chosen and unchosen family, the sweeping effects of gentrification. Through reflections on Black British identity, queer joy, place and belonging, faith and consent, Desree invites the reader on a journey of reclamation, while her wry wit and disarming tenderness hold us through the necessary storms that mark the way.

"A collection of wonder and witness. These poems - both powerful and tender - grapple with the parallels of life and death, the body and spirit, loss and love, and demand a response." Rachel Long

"This is thrilling writing. Unexpected, alive, and curious. Desree enters the page, stage left." Joelle Taylor

"Desree is one of the brightest of us. Through masterful juxtapositions, humour and surrealism, her poems act as a hallway: the reader drops off selves they didn't realise they were carrying, and returns, new and re-accepted into their own arms. Epiphanies shift our world a few inches to the left. For those of us who wonder if we've been 'turned off at the wall': Altar says 'sis', and does the speaking for all of us." Kareem Parkins-Brown