Overview

‘Powerful… Intense and unforgettable' MAX PORTER ‘I’m blown away… An astonishing work' AMY KEY ‘Amazing… Truly a feat' RAYMOND ANTROBUS ‘Devastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles’ Guardian -- A transfixing, heart-rending work which follows a mother and her young son living under the shadow of an all-consuming domestic threat, by T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Wayne Holloway-Smith. 24 Coalbrook Street. The house is trembling with a father's anger. It makes a rabbit of a young boy, sends him burrowing into a wardrobe, and leaves his mother standing hapless and mute over the kitchen sink. In this house, how far can a mother’s comfort travel? From the safety of his hiding place, from the magnitude of his fear, a young girl appears offering a way out. Taking him by the hand, reaching through time, she leads him elsewhere; a mother’s love dreaming him away from their reality to the promise – beautiful yet flickering – of a river. Haunting, precise and tender, RABBITBOX heralds a major new work from one of Britain's most exciting writers. -- ‘It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.’ - JOELLE TAYLOR  

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9781398552425

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Reviews

‘It’s a powerful piece. Properly tunnelled into me in an intense and unforgettable way… The emphasis on love, and the way Wayne combines a symbolic iconography with real world stuff is very strong.’ Max Porter  ‘I’m blown away.  I don’t read Wayne Holloway-Smith’s poetry, I become immersed in its curious, skin-scraping world. In RABBITBOX he creates an atmosphere of eerie vulnerability, a ‘terrible hosanna of language’ that compels as powerfully as it unsettles. I felt the fraught mission of creating safety in a domesticity that could not guarantee it; of the magic tricks a mind must conjure when it lives alongside punishing, pathetic masculinity. An astonishing work.’ Amy Key 'This book is amazing.  Imagine a poetry version of DH Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers blended with Han Kan's novella, The White Book. That could be said of Wayne Holloway-Smith's latest offering, RABBITBOX.  Holloway-Smith is more than a talented poet, he's a gifted phrase-maker. RABBITBOX is a lyrically ambitious and powerfully evocative book on trauma and family. Truly a feat.' Raymond Antrobus ‘It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.’ - Joelle Taylor

‘It’s a powerful piece. Properly tunnelled into me in an intense and unforgettable way… The emphasis on love, and the way Wayne combines a symbolic iconography with real world stuff is very strong.’ Max Porter   ‘I’m blown away.  I don’t read Wayne Holloway-Smith’s poetry, I become immersed in its curious, skin-scraping world. In RABBITBOX he creates an atmosphere of eerie vulnerability, a ‘terrible hosanna of language’ that compels as powerfully as it unsettles. I felt the fraught mission of creating safety in a domesticity that could not guarantee it; of the magic tricks a mind must conjure when it lives alongside punishing, pathetic masculinity. An astonishing work.’ Amy Key   'This book is amazing.  Imagine a poetry version of DH Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers blended with Han Kan's novella, The White Book. That could be said of Wayne Holloway-Smith's latest offering, RABBITBOX.  Holloway-Smith is more than a talented poet, he's a gifted phrase-maker. RABBITBOX is a lyrically ambitious and powerfully evocative book on trauma and family. Truly a feat.' Raymond Antrobus  

‘It’s a powerful piece. Properly tunnelled into me in an intense and unforgettable way… The emphasis on love, and the way Wayne combines a symbolic iconography with real world stuff is very strong.’ Max Porter  ‘I’m blown away.  I don’t read Wayne Holloway-Smith’s poetry, I become immersed in its curious, skin-scraping world. In RABBITBOX he creates an atmosphere of eerie vulnerability, a ‘terrible hosanna of language’ that compels as powerfully as it unsettles. I felt the fraught mission of creating safety in a domesticity that could not guarantee it; of the magic tricks a mind must conjure when it lives alongside punishing, pathetic masculinity. An astonishing work.’ Amy Key 'This book is amazing.  Imagine a poetry version of DH Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers blended with Han Kan's novella, The White Book. That could be said of Wayne Holloway-Smith's latest offering, RABBITBOX.  Holloway-Smith is more than a talented poet, he's a gifted phrase-maker. RABBITBOX is a lyrically ambitious and powerfully evocative book on trauma and family. Truly a feat.' Raymond Antrobus ‘It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.’ - Joelle Taylor 'Devastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles' Guardian

Author Information

Wayne Holloway-Smith is the author of two poetry collections, Alarum (2017) and Love Minus Love (2020), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Ledbury Munte Prize for Best Second Collection. He won The Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2016 and The National Poetry Competition in 2018. He currently lives in London and is Editor of The Poetry Review.

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