Unsafe

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE

The third collection from T. S. Eliot Prize and Jhalak Prize-shortlisted poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf

'As urgent as it is meditative and thought provoking' PRETI TANEJA

'One of the most intellectually daring writers of our generation' MONA ARSHI

'Suspenseful, inventive and empathetic' ELIZABETH-JANE BURNETT

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A disenchanted walk through the afterlives of colonialism across London and LA, Unsafe illuminates the effects of capitalism on those who live at its sharp end.

Situated in the midst of a reckoning with a politics of enclosure, Unsafe is an immersive meditation on place, the body, nature and the self. Whether it’s via tattoos, trees or the totemic quality of cats, McCarthy Woolf pulls us into the processes of gentrification and class division with an immediacy that makes them impossible to ignore.

A moving, critical and fiercely intelligent epic weaving together poetry, documentary and lyric essay, Unsafe is an interrogation of what it means to be a citizen and testimony to the remaining spaces we can call free.

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'McCarthy Woolf possesses a rare, uncanny power' KIT FAN