Kin

Hugh Dunkerley’s long-awaited second collection builds on his acclaimed debut, Hare. Focusing again on the natural world, Kin extends Dunkerley’s finely tuned observation and seamless vision of how human relations are as visceral as anything in nature. The spotlight in this beautifully honed collection falls on fatherhood, linking it to concepts of fatherhood and kinship in other species, whilst the sequence, 'Anatomy of a Breakdown' confirms Dunkerley as a poet who is profoundly poignant, but never sentimental. The language of Kin is spare and clean; its images are always fresh, sometimes unsettling, and invariably intelligent. There is the sense of the visionary here, but it is always the epiphany of the quiet moment that comes from daring to look into the depths of the quotidian.