Comic Timing

Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection

Comic Timing, Holly Pester's extraordinary debut collection of poems, chronicles the experience of living and working as a radical and resistant act. These poems shunt a reader between the political and personal via unique, fragmentary and illusory turns of phrase. Holly tackles marginal bodies, landlords, bog butter, desire, domestic and civic spaces in an unique and illusory voice. She chronicles the prevailing mood of our times, mining radical and anarchic histories to offer a collection of political resistance with both absurdity and seriousness.

These poems interrogate and poke fun at the expectations of people in a commodified culture with a wry humour. Combining a beautifully performed naivety with a profound intellect, this collection is a hugely original approach to a number of pressing issues. Worker's rights, feminisms, reproductive rights and marginalised bodies and their positions are all thought through in this startling and innovative voice.

About the author

Holly Pester is a poet and writer. She has worked in sound art and performance, with BBC Radio, Women's Art Library and Wellcome Collection.

Summary

The long-awaited first collection of poems from an influential young poet.

Product details

• Authors: Holly Pester, Pester Holly
• Publisher: Granta Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 08.04.2025
• EAN: 9781783786862
• ISBN: 978-1-78378-686-2
• No. of pages: 96
• Dimensions: 131 mm x 197 mm x 7 mm
• Weight: 130 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama > Poetry; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; POETRY / General, POETRY / Women Authors, Feminism & feminist theory, Poetry by individual poets, Feminism and feminist theory