Faber Radio presents Jack Underwood
Listen to the poet's Spotify playlist, a companion to his second collection.
For my playlist I tried to find songs that might be in conversation with A Year in the New Life, my second collection with Faber.
It’s a sad and anxious book, really, dealing with the fear of new parenthood, in a dying world, and trying to reckon with the need for hope and the need to risk love in the face of its inevitable loss; what could be more frightening than the brutal, mortal pursuit of loving someone?
Sign me up anyway; there’s really only that, in the end. With music more than poetry, I find I am able to let it win, and I like to let music win: I like to swoon to it, batter my heart and be ravished. With music my windows and doors are open and I am hopelessly susceptible. I just need a bus or a train to peer from, or a pile of washing up to slow the world to the pace of the task; I just need a kind and enigmatic interval to meet myself in. I rarely get anywhere close to that ventilated feeling with poetry.
Listen to the playlist:
This new book of poems finds fresh, spirited ways of navigating a time of continual surprise and uncertainty.