Imperium

Jay Gao is a poet from Edinburgh, Scotland, living in New York City. His debut poetry collection Imperium (Carcanet, 2022) was a winner of the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. He is also the author of five poetry chapbooks and pamphlets. Currently, he reads for Poetry magazine and is a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

'Nuanced, challenging, sometimes hilarious, often anguished, this impressive reimagining of The Odyssey makes for an unforgettable road trip; Gao's Odysseus is a nervy and compelling traveller, a sort of non-hero, itinerant and always somewhat lost. Waylaid with Gao in hotel bars and tour buses, we are estranged, sensitized as we go to the dislocations and non-belonging of children of the world's diasporas, and also to the structures of appropriation and exploitation embedded in travel. We are all conditioned and implicated; but perhaps this acute and attentive Odysseus is exactly who we need to help us listen to the buried histories of Imperialism, to "wait a little differently, mourn a / little more".' Fiona Benson