PLUS ULTRA
Published on 20. April 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
88 pages
978-1-80081-646-6 (ISBN)
Description
'High-concept, formally daring, and sonically rich [...] What a tremendous gift to readers to witness a poetics balanced so deftly between intellect and instinct.' - Kayo Chingonyi
In myth, the Pillars of Hercules near the Straits of Gibraltar mark the edge of what was then the known world, with the warning Ne plus ultra - No more beyond. Beyond power, beyond the sublime, beyond love, PLUS ULTRA begins where other poetry gives up.
Sarah Fletcher's dazzling debut collection pushes at the world, reaching towards the 'beyond' of its title poem to explore questions of power, romance, pain and the sublime. These poems challenge, play and press, but also carry an anxiety around borders: what is 'beyond'? What happens when you reach the boundary and keep going?
With a sharp, Plathian interrogative voice Fletcher's poems prowl the bars and night-haunts of Madrid and London, and in rich, mythic language plumb the below-places where discoveries are made, drowned, and left behind.
In myth, the Pillars of Hercules near the Straits of Gibraltar mark the edge of what was then the known world, with the warning Ne plus ultra - No more beyond. Beyond power, beyond the sublime, beyond love, PLUS ULTRA begins where other poetry gives up.
Sarah Fletcher's dazzling debut collection pushes at the world, reaching towards the 'beyond' of its title poem to explore questions of power, romance, pain and the sublime. These poems challenge, play and press, but also carry an anxiety around borders: what is 'beyond'? What happens when you reach the boundary and keep going?
With a sharp, Plathian interrogative voice Fletcher's poems prowl the bars and night-haunts of Madrid and London, and in rich, mythic language plumb the below-places where discoveries are made, drowned, and left behind.
Reviews / Votes
Sarah Fletcher's poems are highly mobile, troubled, troubling, rich and fraught -- Chris Kraus, author * I Love Dick * 'PLUS ULTRA is an alarming, accomplished and brilliant first collection. Fletcher's ambition, formal invention, erudition and technical precision offer a compelling scaffold for poems that fizz and flit between vulnerability, wit and a brutal willingness to confront the world, and others, with a dark honesty that is frequently refreshing and, occasionally, genuinely menacing. These are poems that demand the reader's full attention, but that also deliver.' * Ahren Warner * PLUS ULTRA is a wild, exciting, lyrical book, free-associative and narrative at the same time ... Fletcher is a poet of the future, and lucky for us, she's arrived just in time. * Matthew Dickman * Cool, sexy, dangerous and brilliant [...] PLUS ULTRA is essential reading. * Victoria Kennefick * The high-concept, formally daring, and sonically rich poems collected in PLUS ULTRA confirm my long-held suspicion that Sarah Fletcher is engaged in the life-long enterprise of mastering the various things a poetic line can do. What a tremendous gift to readers to witness a poetics balanced so deftly between intellect and instinct. * Kayo Chingonyi *More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
n/a
Dimensions
Height: 130 mm
Width: 196 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
116 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80081-646-6 (9781800816466)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Sarah Fletcher is an American-British writer currently researching a PhD at Aberystwyth in pain and language. Her poems have appeared in The White Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review and other publications. She has published three pamphlets: Kissing Angles (Dead Ink, 2015), Typhoid August (Poetry Business, 2018) and Caviar (Out-Spoken, 2022).