Poem of the Week: God Complex by Rachael Allen
8 January 2024
Our poem of the week comes from Rachael Allen’s eagerly awaited second collection God Complex, a visionary, corrosive narrative poem that fuses the end of a relationship with planetary catastrophe.
from God Complex
A bird gags sweetly on the new green deal
as I work my way through ineffable instructions
on how to live this poor and shabby life
as performance. How to pack it, sell it?
There is masochism in a decade making out
under the quilt of an unholy government
who never seem to end, who command
the dimensions of our poorness.
We grow stunted in contaminated soil,
eking into the bloodstream, bringing
an omnipresent confusion into the social
consciousness. How wholly are we to be pressed?
Copyright © Rachael Allen, 2024. Used by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.
God Complex by Rachael Allen is available to pre-order now.
Read more poems in this series
Poem of the Week, 1 January 2024 – ‘Little Gidding’ by T. S. EliotBuy the Book
God Complex is a sweeping and corrosive epic, a narrative poem that tells the story of the breakdown of a relationship against a backdrop of progressive environmental degradation.
About the Author
Rachael Allen’s first collection of poems, Kingdomland (2019), was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She was the recipient of a Northern Writers’ Award and an Eric Gregory Award. She was born in Cornwall and works as an editor and lecturer in London.
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