Nobody

Alice Oswald is at the height of her powers in…this electrifying new work… It is out of this world – and in it. It is mythical and realistic, ancient and modern. * Observer, Poetry Book of the Month *Sometimes the rush of unexpected language is thrilling… It is a wonderfully skilful tarantella of syllables and images… Nobody is Oswald’s most formally freehand work, a fragmentary gathering of murmurings searching for the excitement of new meaning. – Jeremy Noel-Todd * Sunday Times *[Oswald is] a revolutionary, an eco-poet whose ideas are alive with sensory experience. Her new book, Nobody, is a kind of verse novel which refuses even the conventions of storytelling. * Guardian *[Nobody] is a paean to water, to the fluidity of language and the porousness between beings and stories… Both form and language echo the ceaseless drift, flitting movement and translucence of their uncontainable body…and, as with any memorable trip, the effects of reading Nobody linger in and around the mind long after the experience has passed. * Financial Times *The text (and characters) ebb and flow as mesmerically as the sea, a fluid abstraction that speaks to the power of the ocean. * i *Quiet, woozy, immersive…Nobody…[is] marvellous. * Daily Telegraph *Seldom has the idea of being adrift been so feelingly realised. – Michael Glover * Tablet *An invigorating book-length poem. – Sara Wheeler * Spectator, Best books of 2019 *

Alice Oswald lives in Devon and is married with three children. Her collections include Dart, which won the 2002 T.S. Eliot Prize, Woods etc. (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), A Sleepwalk on the Severn (Hawthornden Prize), Weeds and Wildflowers (Ted Hughes Award), Memorial (Warwick Prize for Writing), and Falling Awake, which won the 2016 Costa Poetry Award and the Griffin Prize for Poetry. She was elected as the Oxford University Professor of Poetry in 2019.