Suburban Locust

I dare the lightning, take hold of its levers cranking out the weather while God is on business. I take on the responsibility without knowing the consequences, without knowing the thunder. Antosh Wojcik's anticipated debut, Suburban Locust is a wild ride of a collection born to be read in a single, breathless sitting. With compelling narrative cohesion and dark yet whimsical surrealism, Wojcik's poems drive us into the heart of an earthquake, within which a loveable, dysfunctional family battle against the elements of addiction and inherited trauma, their seemingly weatherproof bonds stretched to breaking point against an angry sky. Set across Texas, Warsaw and an unspecified English suburb, nonetheless this story feels biblical in its music and litany. It is visited by plagues (locusts, dealers, feds, choirs, wartime ghosts, sandy dudes, termites, bad neighbours, shark-headed behemoths, problematic astro-turf installers) and ablaze with the fiery glow of the apocalypse. An ingenious and irresistible read, from one of UK poetry's brightest talents. 'Like James Tate, but drunk' Roger Robinson