God Complex

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. A grieving body moves through states of toxicity, becoming an instrument for measuring the impact of pollutants. an entwining of human and non-human, built environment and natural landscape blurs perspective and distorts logic, creating an erratic decline into disorder. Loss is divined everywhere: in human relations, in the ruptures of class and privilege, and the poisoning of the planet. It is through a purgatorial leavening of pain that the narrator comes to terms with the delicate, shifting states of the ecological systems that merge with and surround us to create new forms of being and devotion. The result is visionary - a book that vibrates with urgency and feeling.

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.