Sparrow on the Rooftop

Rachel Long''s keenly anticipated second collection is a diamond-sharp study of desire, crisis and recovery, at once moving and whip-smart, from one of our brightest talents '' There are days you don''t wake for. You dream of delicious nothing.'' Excess, denial, nurture, faith, holiness and transformation are some of the themes that animate this engrossing, at times frighteningly intimate, narrative collection. Sparrow on the Rooftop tells a story of new love: the summer-like giddiness of it, the ferocity of obsession, and the stark hollowing of absence. Alongside this affair and unleashed by its intensity unfolds another story, half-buried, about our young narrator''s uneasy relationship with her body: '' Black girls// don''t get/ eating disorders./ That''s a white girl/ thing .'' With fierce wit and uncommon insight, Sparrow interrogates the self and other, and the experience of self as other. These remarkable, penetrating, headlong poems chart disorder and desire, break-up and breakdown, and the hard path towards recovery, confirming Rachel Long as one of the most gifted poets of her generation.

About the author

Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions (2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Jhalak Prize Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. Long is a guest lecturer at Goldsmiths College, London. She was born in London, and now lives in Margate.

Product details

• Authors: Rachel Long
• Publisher: Chatto and Windus
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 11.06.2026
• EAN: 9781784746582
• ISBN: 978-1-78474-658-2
• No. of pages: 80
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 216 mm x 20 mm
• Subjects: POETRY / Women Authors, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Love & Erotica, POETRY / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Poetry by individual poets, Gender studies: women and girls, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Poetry / poems by individual poets, Modern and contemporary poetry / poems