Jinx

Jinx: a ruinous charm, a quickdraw curse, a knight’s move. Abigail Parry’s first collection is concerned with spells, and ersatz spells: with semblance and sleight-of-hand. It takes its formal cues from moth-camouflage and stage magic, from the mirror-maze and the masquerade, and from high-stakes games of poker. Jinx asks about the equivocal nature of artifice, and the mischief behind the trick. The poems deal in forms of influence: in seduction and persuasion, infatuation and obsession. They want to talk about what we submit to, and what we are compelled by. ‘These are outstanding poems: constructed like a collection of beautifully made, trick, locked boxes, they are innovative, complex, and lush in their language and texture. In an explosion of gaming we find etymological digging, rare words, number games, anagrams, hidden shapes – as well as a range of experiments in traditional and contemporary form. This is poetry con brio, ambitious, far-reaching, but using disguise to tell hidden stories of emotion and pain.’ – Jo Shapcott ‘Abigail Parry brings a trickster’s delight in instability, not just to the old themes of innocence and experience, but to the shadowed and less commonly charted regions that lie between. Her poems move, and change, rapidly and headily, with a musical springiness that never flags and is all her own. Jinx is an abundant, exuberant, unsolemnly wise, and wholly beguiling first book that marks Parry out as the pace-setter of her generation.’ – Christopher Reid ‘The creatures and ideas that people these poems of wit and wonders are both worldly objects and magical tokens. In my view this vivid metaphysical collection is the most exciting and interesting poetic debut for years.’ – Bernard O’Donoghue