In Your Absence

What Writers and Critics Think

• In Your Absence is a searingly accurate enactment of a traumatic incident and loss. The language is spare and controlled, stepping carefully around the territory of waiting, the rituals of attending a hospital bedside, the terrible confusion of death and its aftermath, ‘the phone call came whilst signing for a suitcase at the hospital / the police station / the lost and found / … or in the desperate late night café …’

  Imtiaz Dharker

• I was bowled over by the confidence of this pamphlet; the way the writer was unafraid to tackle long-ish sequences, pieces that were almost dialogue, lyric poems and very tiny lines juxtaposed with longer lines. I had the sense that poet was unafraid of using language for their own ends; in other words they didn’t feel bound by the conventions of what a pamphlet of poems might be. Death, love, loss and an urgent need to take note of these things before their associations pass gave a burning ‘carpe diem’ tone to the pieces.

  Ian McMillan

• In Your Absence is powerful and original, heralding the arrival of a poet to watch. Though full of grace and ease, this collection remains urgent – a visual and emotional thriller that celebrates love even as it bears witness to its loss. There is a poised articulation of bereavement here, as well as a refusal to accept the reality of death; a longing for what has been taken that lingers in the mind long after the last page has been turned.

  Anjum Malik