In a bracing renewal of civic poetry, the award-winning essayist and poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips presents his first publication in the UK. Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a blade of light homing in on our political moment. Phillips ruminates on violins and violence, on hatred and pleasure, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. Formed by a language of grace and urgency, these are poems of survival as much as indictment. Living Weapon is a piercing collection from ‘a virtuoso poetic voice’ (Granta).

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe’s spellbinding debut poetry collection explores love and the wounds it makes. Its first half is composed of five sections, corresponding to the five arrows of Kāma, the Hindu God of Love, Desire and Memory. The second is a long narrative poem, ‘A is for العرب [Arabs]’, which follows a different kind of journey: a family of refugees who have fled to the West from conflict in an unspecified Middle Eastern country. With an extraordinary structure, it is a skilful and intimate account of migration and exile, of home and belonging.

Editors Matthew Hollis and Lavinia Singer say, ‘It is an honour for Faber to welcome to the list two poets of narrative force and lyrical grace, whose work responds to the political moment while drawing richly upon the heritage of the past. Distinctive in approach and subject, united in their rhythmic and intellectual power, Rowan and Nidhi offer voices for our times and pathways for our future.’

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of two previous books of poems (Heaven and The Ground) and two essay collections (The Circuit and When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness). As well as being a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, his awards include a Whiting Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing and the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award. Phillips lives in New York City and Barcelona.

Twitter @RowanRicardo

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Born in India, she grew up across the Middle East, Europe and North America before calling Ireland home. She is the founder of the P[l]ay It Forward Fellowships for underrepresented writers, an advisory board member of Ledbury Poetry Critics Ireland and co-editor of a forthcoming commemorative anthology with the Ireland Chair of Poetry. She is the recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland.

Twitter @AriaEipe

On Sunday 11 October Faber Members will release a film of Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Natalie Diaz and Barbara Kingsolver reading their poetry from three different time zones across the world. Faber Members is free to join at faber.co.uk/members