Emily Berry – författare

Dear Boy is the dramatic and inventive debut by Emily Berry. These characterful, intelligent and darkly witty poems explore lives lived strangely in unusual worlds, through a series of deft and seductive soliloquies. In a collection with a taste for ventriloquy and wickedness, and a flair for vocal cross-dressing, the balance of power is always shifting in an unexpected direction - an ingénue masquerades as a femme fatale, a doctor appears more disturbed than his patient, and parents seem more unruly than their children. Eccentric, intimate, arch, anxious, decadent and sometimes mournful, the book's confiding, conversational voices tell stories recognisable and refracted, carried along by the undercurrent on which the collection ebbs and rides: the anguish and energy brought about by a long-distance love affair, which propels and terrorises and ultimately unites the work. Dear Boy is an irresistible and enlivening collection by a new poet of startling and various gifts.

The powerful new collection from award-winning poet, Emily Berry. Emily Berry's Dear Boy was described as a 'blazing debut', winning the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2013. Stranger, Baby, its follow-up, is marked by the same sense of fantasy and play, estrangement and edgy humour for which she has become known. But these poems delve deeper again, in their off-kilter and often painful encounter with childhood loss. This is a book of mourning, recrimination, exhilaration and 'oceanic feeling': 'A meditation on a want that can never be answered.'

Unexhausted Time inhabits a world of dream and dawn, in which thoughts touch us 'like soft rain', and all the elements are brought closer in.Feelings, messages, symbols, visions . . . Emily Berry's latest collection takes shape in the half-light between the real and the imagined, where everything is lost and yet 'nothing goes away'. Here life's innumerable impressions, moods, seasons and déjà vus collect and disarrange themselves, while a glowing, companionable 'I' travels the mind's landscapes in hope of refuge and transformation amid these displaced moments in time. Whether one reads Unexhausted Time as a long poem to step into or a series of titled and untitled fragments to pick up and cherish, the work is healing and inspiring, always asking how we might harness the power of naming without losing life's 'magic unknownness'. By offering these intangible encounters, Emily Berry more truly presents 'what being alive is'.'Emily Berry has a refreshingly free, not to say incendiary, approach to poetry.' Observer

Long-listed for a Saboteur Award 2016: Best Anthology“Your indispensable guide to the poetry of these islands, now in its fifth year”The Best British Poetry presents the finest and most engaging poems found in literary magazines and webzines over the past year. The material gathered represents the rich variety of current UK poetry. Each poem is accompanied by a note by the poet explaining the inspiration for the poem.Featuring: Aria Misha Aber, Astrid Alben, Rachael Allen, Janette Ayachi, Tara Bergin, Crispin Best, Amy Blakemore, Sarah Boulton, Kit Buchan, Sam Buchan-Watts, Miles Burrows, Niall Campbell, Vahni Capildeo, Kayo Chingonyi, Sophie Collins, Claire Crowther, Paula Cunningham, Jesse Darling, Patricia Debney, Ian Duhig, Joe Dunthorne, Francine Elena, Inua Ellams, Andrew Elliott, Victoria Field, Annie Freud, Matthew Gregory, David Hart, Selima Hill, Sarah Howe, Kathleen Jamie, Tom Jenks, Luke Kennard, Amy Key, Kate Kilalea, Caleb Klaces, Zaffar Kunial, Daisy Lafarge, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Dorothy Lehane, Fran Lock, Adam Lowe, Chris McCabe, Amy McCauley, Alex MacDonald, Andrew McMillan, Kathryn Maris, Sophie Mayer, Kim Moore, Salah Niazi, Jeremy Over, Bobby Parker, Rebecca Perry, Holly Pester, Heather Phillipson, Padraig Regan, Sam Riviere, Sophie Robinson, Jessica Schouela, Stephen Sexton, Penelope Shuttle, Hannah Silva, Marcus Slease, Greta Stoddart, Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Rebecca Tamás, Jack Underwood, Mark Waldron, Megan Watkins, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch