A Man's House Catches Fire

What to do when everything goes up in flames? Summon up A Man's House Catches Fire, Tom Sastry's debut collection of poetry, with all its elegant, satirical and hurt-quenching power: here are nightmares and fairytales, museums full of regret, mis-enchantments and magic for dark times. Whilst the accelerants of complicity and violence seep from these exacting poems, Sastry's wit and stoicism slake the bonfire of modern troubles. They defiantly ask us: why do 'the great marquees of England' stand empty? How old is your heart? Why aren't we listening to the sea, and what it has to say? Funny, marvellously frank and often courageous, A Man's House Catches Fire urges us to take a long hard look into the flames and avert the disasters of the heart, home and nations that threaten to befall us all. 'Tom Sastry is a magician of deadpan. He's kind of like if the Atlantic Ocean had a laugh track. Terrifying and hypnotic, but also desperately funny. This collection is generous in both its clarity and mystery.' - Hera Lindsay Bird 'Tom Sastry's poems stare down the ridiculousness of the world we live in, and offer us ways to carry on in spite of it. These are poems of bright wit and astonishing vulnerability, with one eye always on the future. A Man's House Catches Fire gives us the simultaneous pain and joy of being a human being; reminds us it is marvellous / that it still hurts.' - Suzannah Evans

Tom Sastry is political, ironic, emotional, morbid and funny in all the wrong places. He has published two previous collections (both with Nine Arches) and one pamphlet. These have been (variously) Poetry School Book of the Year, Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice, highly commended in the Forward Prize and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize.