Overview

“Bleak but wonderful ... familiar, and of course funny.” Alan Bennett “Dark, funny and twisted, but surprisingly tender.” A.L. Kennedy Couples is a blackly comic sequence of poems that explore the nature of co-dependency – of two people who want to be together, but at the same time cannot help but push each other away. The layout of the book is itself a commentary on the phenomenon – the poems are placed in their own ‘couples’, pairs that face each other across the page. Sometimes they exchange a glance, sometimes they stand side-by-side, staring out into the abyss; only when the book is closed, and they are in darkness, do they truly come together. Originally published on Valentine’s Day 2013, the seven-year itch has brought Michael Stewart back to his old flame for a new edition in 2020; reworking the original poems, and adding a dozen more. The result is an unnervingly perceptive volume, to be shared with your ‘other half’ at your own risk – you may never look at a couple, or each other, the same way again.

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9781912436408

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Reviews

Bleak but wonderful ... familiar, and of course funny. Alan Bennett Dark, funny and twisted, but surprisingly tender. A.L. Kennedy

Author Information

Michael Stewart was born in Salford in 1971, and now lives in Bradford. He is head of Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield. He is the author of three novels, including King Crow, winner of the 2011 Not the Booker Prize, Café Assassin and Ill Will, as well as a collection of short stories, Mr Jolly, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2017. He has also written several audio dramas for BBC Radio 4, and other scripts for stage and screen. Find him on Twitter @headspam.

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