Sunday at the Skin Laundrette

Quietly persuasive and formally adept, the poems in Kathryn Simmonds’ first collection engage with both the quotidian and the transcendental. Often in urban or suburban settings, her protagonists struggle with mundane tasks such as cooking or commuting or office work – all of the obstacles of modernity – and then, by some shift of attention, or by some keen narrowing of focus, they chance upon the surreal or the spiritual.

‘An expansive imagination, a wide formal range, wit and humanity – Sunday at the Skin Laundrette is a remarkable debut.’ – Michael Symmons Roberts