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Afterburn

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: London Chatto & Windus; Penguin Random House 2026Description: 83pISBN:
  • 9781784746032
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 821.92 MOR
Summary: 'Lucid, tender and humane . . . One of the most formally agile and compassionate poets of our age’ Fiona Benson Here you are, on the balcony, the sea serenading you, the sun with its armful of light. In Afterburn, Blake Morrison returns to poetry, his first calling, to offers scenes from his own life and the lives of others. In psychology, 'afterburn' refers to the time before a past event is assimilated – an idea that resonates through these poems (which themselves linger after reading) about memory and our attempts to articulate, shape or contain it. Throughout the collection, not least in two extraordinary sequences – one about his sister, the other about Elizabeth Bishop – the poet sees with new eyes the turning points in a life's accidental course. What holds his wise, touching, melancholy yet joyful poems together are the small intimacies that bind us to others, under time’s lengthening shadow: ‘you moved too fast for me to catch you / and so did the years.’ Playful and charming, sometimes rakishly so, Afterburn nevertheless reveals an open, and vulnerable, heart.
List(s) this item appears in: New Arrivals September, 2026
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Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Books Books Gandhi Smriti Library 821.92 MOR (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 186362
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'Lucid, tender and humane . . . One of the most formally agile and compassionate poets of our age’ Fiona Benson
Here you are, on the balcony,
the sea serenading you,
the sun with its armful of light.
In Afterburn, Blake Morrison returns to poetry, his first calling, to offers scenes from his own life and the lives of others. In psychology, 'afterburn' refers to the time before a past event is assimilated – an idea that resonates through these poems (which themselves linger after reading) about memory and our attempts to articulate, shape or contain it.
Throughout the collection, not least in two extraordinary sequences – one about his sister, the other about Elizabeth Bishop – the poet sees with new eyes the turning points in a life's accidental course. What holds his wise, touching, melancholy yet joyful poems together are the small intimacies that bind us to others, under time’s lengthening shadow: ‘you moved too fast for me to catch you / and so did the years.’
Playful and charming, sometimes rakishly so, Afterburn nevertheless reveals an open, and vulnerable, heart.

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