Lairs

'A poet who instinctively sees the possibilities of defamiliarisation wherever she casts her penetrating, colour-loving eye' (Carol Rumens, Guardian) 'Her poems wrestle at the interface between self and other and from the heat of that fight she forges startlingly original imagery' (Poetry London) re:Loudness '...the collection takes on an imaginative charge that sparks many surprises...there's no telling what Brown will do next, but it will be worth reading.' On Loudness(Douglas Houston in Poetry Review) 'Sometimes narky, sometimes tender and afraid, each poem offers up its own shock of uneasy wonder. Judy Brown troubles the edges of certainty in poems that greet us with a glittering strangeness. This is a thrilling and compulsive collection.' - Kathryn Simmonds What do animal dens have in common with mathematics??Lairs?is darkly suggestive of secretive havens and shelters, but also frames the poem as an equation. This collection is both a kind of nest and a beautiful accumulation of dense detail.?Lairs?also highlights the contrast between noble aspirations and a messy reality, the poems' atmospheres being sometimes borrowed from the fervid pandemic lockdowns. The innovative style is daring and embraces complex music. Post-Brexit life is also a subtle strand in these poems, as they deflate and challenge establishment conservatism.

Judy Brown was born in Cheshire. She grew up in Northumberland and Cumbria and studied English at Cambridge and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She has worked as a lawyer in London and,?in the early 1990s, in Hong Kong. Her pamphlet,?Pillars of Salt?(Templar Poetry, 2006), won the Templar Pamphlet Competition. She received the Poetry Society's Hamish Canham Prize, and won the Poetry London Competition and the Manchester Poetry Prize.? Judy's first poetry collection,?Loudness?(Seren, 2011), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best first collection and the Fenton?Aldeburgh?Prize. Her most recent collection,?Crowd Sensations?(Seren, 2016) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted?for the Ledbury?Forte Second Collection Prize. Judy now works as a freelance tutor and mentor and?gives Poetry Surgeries in London and online for the Poetry Society.