Platinum Blonde

Phoebe Stuckes is a writer from West Somerset. She has been a winner of the Foyle Young Poets award four times and is a former Barbican Young Poet. She has performed at the Southbank Centre, Waterstones Trafalgar Square, Wenlock Poetry Festival and she was the Ledbury Poetry Festival young poet in residence in 2015. She has also read her work on BBC Radio 3. Her writing has appeared in The Rialto, The North, Ash and Ambit among others. Her debut pamphlet, Gin & Tonic (smith | doorstop) was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award 2017, and she won an Eric Gregory Award in 2019. Her first full-length collection, Platinum Blonde, is published by Bloodaxe in September 2020. Her poem ‘Thus I became a heart-eater’ from Platinum Blonde won the Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 2019.

The poems in Platinum Blonde are vulnerable, performative, and ardently female. Stuckes deftly balances violence and wit, self-consciousness and panache. She can turn a sentence on a dime: “This is how I want to die; in a boat, on fire / while Billie Holiday crawls out of a speaker.” And “Having an affair / is just getting all dressed up to cut yourself.” Get yourself a bottle of gin, some photos of your exes, and settle into a velvet chaise longue to read. You’re going to love this book.

• 9 Bleach10Carrie (1976)11 Supermoon12 Three spells13 Monologue14 Platinum Blonde15 Bad Girls Club16 Kiss me quick17 Hell is a bus full of the men I’ve unsuccessfully tried to love18 Advice for Girls19 Sugar20 Marshmallows21 Blood22 Stronger than me23 Cassandra28 Gold Hoop Earrings29 Forgiveness30 Why does he do that31 Fear32 Wolfish33 Home34 Blues35 $$$36 Attempt37 Look at me now39 Fox40 Disco41 Bronski Beat42 Romance43 Sun Sign44 Scorpion45 Sext46 BDSM47 How to get over it48 Proposal 49 Ghosts50 Wet51 Dinner52 A good man is a humane mouse-trap53 Kissing a girl in front of a Salvation Army church54 Daughter55 Thus I became a heart-eater56 Purple Heart57 Francesca Woodman58 Pangea59 Poem in which I leave and don’t come back60 Lying61 Is this thing on?62 Confessional63 Mad Chicks Cool