Though still in his mid-twenties Jacob Polley is already in possession of a remarkably mature talent. Formally graceful, but unself-conscious, his poems come at the reader from all angles, wholly alive to the unique possibilities of their subjects - the sea, the land, the home, the very brink of things.This debut collection gives us the first opportunity to see his transforming imagination in action, where a jar of honey becomes '... the sun, all flesh and no bones / but for the floating knuckle / of the honeycomb / attesting to the nature of the struggle'.

While Jacob Polley's first collection, The Brink, announced a poet of great promise, few readers will be prepared for a work of the mature and slow power of Little Gods. Polley has been guided more and more by old-fashioned lyric inspiration of the sort all too rare in contemporary English poetry. In the quiet, insistent chants of his love poems and in his almost occult conjurings of time and place, Polley achieves both a directness of expression and unsentimental intimacy of address that only a poet of very considerable gifts could even attempt. Little Gods unequivocally announces Polley as one of the leading British poets of his generation.Praise for The Brink:'The kind of poetry that imbues the everyday, the tarnished and burnished, with the possibilities of the transcendent' Guardian'A sparkling collection of crystalline poems, succinct in their observation, precise in their form' The Times

1986, the last day of the summer holidays, and Christopher Hearsey is wondering why his best mate Arthur has suddenly disappeared, and whether lippy Gill Ross a few doors down might know anything about it. The border city of Carlisle is buzzing with rumours following an act of terrible violence, and in order to begin his search Chris must face down his own dread, not only of the consequences of his own actions, but of local big man Booby Grove, and his psychotic sidekick Carl ‘the black’ Hole.Populated by a menacing and hilarious cast of characters, and moving from the dark aggrieved streets of the city to the agricultural hinterland of the Solway Firth, this is the story of a boy desperate to get out of town, out of a bad situation, even out of his own skin . . .‘A fierce cry of talent, raw as a confession and tender as a poem. Polley’s language is mercurial, his humour quick and surprising.’ Chris Cleave‘A perfectly pitched quest for lost innocence’ John Burnside, Guardian‘This is a disconcerting debut novel about how meaning is constructed from murmur, gossip and half-truth . . . Capturing the chaotic rhythms of these young lives in vivid yet unsentimental prose, Polley hits the perfect pitch.’ Anita Sethi, Independent

1986, the last day of the summer holidays, and Christopher Hearsey is wondering why his best mate Arthur has suddenly disappeared, and whether lippy Gill Ross a few doors down might know anything about it. The border city of Carlisle is buzzing with rumours following an act of terrible violence, and in order to begin his search Chris must face down his own dread, not only of the consequences of his own actions, but of local big man Booby Grove, and his psychotic sidekick Carl ‘the black’ Hole.Populated by a menacing and hilarious cast of characters, and moving from the dark aggrieved streets of the city to the agricultural hinterland of the Solway Firth, this is the story of a boy desperate to get out of town, out of a bad situation, even out of his own skin . . .‘A fierce cry of talent, raw as a confession and tender as a poem. Polley’s language is mercurial, his humour quick and surprising.’ Chris Cleave‘A perfectly pitched quest for lost innocence’ John Burnside, Guardian‘This is a disconcerting debut novel about how meaning is constructed from murmur, gossip and half-truth . . . Capturing the chaotic rhythms of these young lives in vivid yet unsentimental prose, Polley hits the perfect pitch.’ Anita Sethi, Independent

Material Properties, Jacob Polley's fiith collection of poems with Picador, asks what it might mean to interpret and translate wildness into human language and human understanding. The book is a multi-faceted and vital exploration of the non-human, the elemental and the borders between existences. Through poems of parenthood at a time of environmental emergency, and poetic versions of Old English riddles in which animals, objects and natural phenomena speak, the book poses essential questions about our relationship with the living world and with each other.Praise for previous work, Jackself, from T.S. Eliot Prize judges: ‘a firework of a book, inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling’.

Material Properties, Jacob Polley's fiith collection of poems with Picador, asks what it might mean to interpret and translate wildness into human language and human understanding. The book is a multi-faceted and vital exploration of the non-human, the elemental and the borders between existences. Through poems of parenthood at a time of environmental emergency, and poetic versions of Old English riddles in which animals, objects and natural phenomena speak, the book poses essential questions about our relationship with the living world and with each other.Praise for previous work, Jackself, from T.S. Eliot Prize judges: ‘a firework of a book, inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling’.

Poetry Book Society Autumn 2026 Special CommendationA sweeping selection from acclaimed poet, Jacob Polley, which showcases his full poetic range. Over the two decades since his award-winning debut, The Brink, Jacob Polley has earned a reputation as one of the major poetic talents to come out of the north of England. Rooted in the folkloric inheritance of Reiver country – in its rhymes and spells, its work and weather – his poems conduct the electricity of the English lyric tradition into modern vessels and remastered forms.Metamorphosis is central to his perception: with the lightest touch, sunlight becomes honey, children become owls, and loss is alchemised into objects and animals, love songs and cradle songs. The wild lyric energy of his T. S. Eliot Prize-winning Jackself reminds us that childhood has remained the omphalos for Polley, his work a place where the wonders and terrors of a rural upbringing are repeatedly explored and elegised.Transformation becomes translation in his more recent poems, where voices grapple with meaning itself in riddles without answers, or with various answers, and elemental tumult is harnessed into speech. ‘I‘ve tried to enact a kind of intense alertness in my poems,‘ he writes, ‘to what it‘s like to be alive and conscious and a person that the world pours into through the ears, eyes and heart‘.An ideal entry point for new readers, Selected Poems affirms Jacob Polley’s standing as one of the most gifted poets of his generation.‘Masterful‘ Stephanie Sy-Quia, The Poetry Review

Little Gods established Jacob Polley as one of the leading talents of the younger generation; his third collection sees him extend that gift in often wholly unexpected directions. As before, Polley’s work is often unashamedly lyric, and displays a virtuosic range of form and address. However, the light has changed in The Havocs: these poems are often imbued with the weird, uncanny and otherworldly, drawing on the folkloric and mythic traditions of north Britain – as well as forms from older English traditions, including riddles and cautionary tales. However oblique his strategies, Polley’s work remains fixed on our most central concerns: our losses of faith, our working lives, our irrational fears and our loves. The Havocs charts a daring new turn in the work of one of our finest English poets.

Little Gods established Jacob Polley as one of the leading talents of the younger generation; his third collection sees him extend that gift in often wholly unexpected directions. As before, Polley’s work is often unashamedly lyric, and displays a virtuosic range of form and address. However, the light has changed in The Havocs: these poems are often imbued with the weird, uncanny and otherworldly, drawing on the folkloric and mythic traditions of north Britain – as well as forms from older English traditions, including riddles and cautionary tales. However oblique his strategies, Polley’s work remains fixed on our most central concerns: our losses of faith, our working lives, our irrational fears and our loves. The Havocs charts a daring new turn in the work of one of our finest English poets.

Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.Jackself is the fourth collection from one of Britain's finest poets, and sees Jacob Polley at the height of his powers. In one of the most original books of poetry to appear in the last decade, Jackself spins a kind of 'fictionalized autobiography' through nursery rhymes, riddles and cautionary tales, and through the many 'Jacks' of our folktale, legend, phrase and fable - everyman Jacks and no one Jacks, Jackdaw, Jack-O-Lantern, Jack Sprat, Cheapjack and Jack Frost. At once playful and terrifying, lyric and narratively compelling, Jackself is an unforgettable exploration of an innocence and childhood lost in the darker corners of Reiver country and of English folklore, and once more shows Polley as one of the most remarkable imaginations at work in poetry today.T. S. Eliot judging panel described Jackself as 'a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling'.

Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.Jackself is the fourth collection from one of Britain's finest poets, and sees Jacob Polley at the height of his powers. In one of the most original books of poetry to appear in the last decade, Jackself spins a kind of 'fictionalized autobiography' through nursery rhymes, riddles and cautionary tales, and through the many 'Jacks' of our folktale, legend, phrase and fable - everyman Jacks and no one Jacks, Jackdaw, Jack-O-Lantern, Jack Sprat, Cheapjack and Jack Frost. At once playful and terrifying, lyric and narratively compelling, Jackself is an unforgettable exploration of an innocence and childhood lost in the darker corners of Reiver country and of English folklore, and once more shows Polley as one of the most remarkable imaginations at work in poetry today.T. S. Eliot judging panel described Jackself as 'a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling'.

Though still in his mid-twenties Jacob Polley is already in possession of a remarkably mature talent. Formally graceful, but unself-conscious, his poems come at the reader from all angles, wholly alive to the unique possibilities of their subjects - the sea, the land, the home, the very brink of things.This debut collection gives us the first opportunity to see his transforming imagination in action, where a jar of honey becomes '... the sun, all flesh and no bones / but for the floating knuckle / of the honeycomb / attesting to the nature of the struggle'.

While Jacob Polley's first collection, The Brink, announced a poet of great promise, few readers will be prepared for a work of the mature and slow power of Little Gods. Polley has been guided more and more by old-fashioned lyric inspiration of the sort all too rare in contemporary English poetry. In the quiet, insistent chants of his love poems and in his almost occult conjurings of time and place, Polley achieves both a directness of expression and unsentimental intimacy of address that only a poet of very considerable gifts could even attempt. Little Gods unequivocally announces Polley as one of the leading British poets of his generation.Praise for The Brink:'The kind of poetry that imbues the everyday, the tarnished and burnished, with the possibilities of the transcendent' Guardian'A sparkling collection of crystalline poems, succinct in their observation, precise in their form' The Times

1986, the last day of the summer holidays, and Christopher Hearsey is wondering why his best mate Arthur has suddenly disappeared, and whether lippy Gill Ross a few doors down might know anything about it. The border city of Carlisle is buzzing with rumours following an act of terrible violence, and in order to begin his search Chris must face down his own dread, not only of the consequences of his own actions, but of local big man Booby Grove, and his psychotic sidekick Carl ‘the black’ Hole.Populated by a menacing and hilarious cast of characters, and moving from the dark aggrieved streets of the city to the agricultural hinterland of the Solway Firth, this is the story of a boy desperate to get out of town, out of a bad situation, even out of his own skin . . .‘A fierce cry of talent, raw as a confession and tender as a poem. Polley’s language is mercurial, his humour quick and surprising.’ Chris Cleave‘A perfectly pitched quest for lost innocence’ John Burnside, Guardian‘This is a disconcerting debut novel about how meaning is constructed from murmur, gossip and half-truth . . . Capturing the chaotic rhythms of these young lives in vivid yet unsentimental prose, Polley hits the perfect pitch.’ Anita Sethi, Independent

1986, the last day of the summer holidays, and Christopher Hearsey is wondering why his best mate Arthur has suddenly disappeared, and whether lippy Gill Ross a few doors down might know anything about it. The border city of Carlisle is buzzing with rumours following an act of terrible violence, and in order to begin his search Chris must face down his own dread, not only of the consequences of his own actions, but of local big man Booby Grove, and his psychotic sidekick Carl ‘the black’ Hole.Populated by a menacing and hilarious cast of characters, and moving from the dark aggrieved streets of the city to the agricultural hinterland of the Solway Firth, this is the story of a boy desperate to get out of town, out of a bad situation, even out of his own skin . . .‘A fierce cry of talent, raw as a confession and tender as a poem. Polley’s language is mercurial, his humour quick and surprising.’ Chris Cleave‘A perfectly pitched quest for lost innocence’ John Burnside, Guardian‘This is a disconcerting debut novel about how meaning is constructed from murmur, gossip and half-truth . . . Capturing the chaotic rhythms of these young lives in vivid yet unsentimental prose, Polley hits the perfect pitch.’ Anita Sethi, Independent

Material Properties, Jacob Polley's fiith collection of poems with Picador, asks what it might mean to interpret and translate wildness into human language and human understanding. The book is a multi-faceted and vital exploration of the non-human, the elemental and the borders between existences. Through poems of parenthood at a time of environmental emergency, and poetic versions of Old English riddles in which animals, objects and natural phenomena speak, the book poses essential questions about our relationship with the living world and with each other.Praise for previous work, Jackself, from T.S. Eliot Prize judges: ‘a firework of a book, inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling’.

Material Properties, Jacob Polley's fiith collection of poems with Picador, asks what it might mean to interpret and translate wildness into human language and human understanding. The book is a multi-faceted and vital exploration of the non-human, the elemental and the borders between existences. Through poems of parenthood at a time of environmental emergency, and poetic versions of Old English riddles in which animals, objects and natural phenomena speak, the book poses essential questions about our relationship with the living world and with each other.Praise for previous work, Jackself, from T.S. Eliot Prize judges: ‘a firework of a book, inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling’.

Poetry Book Society Autumn 2026 Special CommendationA sweeping selection from acclaimed poet, Jacob Polley, which showcases his full poetic range. Over the two decades since his award-winning debut, The Brink, Jacob Polley has earned a reputation as one of the major poetic talents to come out of the north of England. Rooted in the folkloric inheritance of Reiver country – in its rhymes and spells, its work and weather – his poems conduct the electricity of the English lyric tradition into modern vessels and remastered forms.Metamorphosis is central to his perception: with the lightest touch, sunlight becomes honey, children become owls, and loss is alchemised into objects and animals, love songs and cradle songs. The wild lyric energy of his T. S. Eliot Prize-winning Jackself reminds us that childhood has remained the omphalos for Polley, his work a place where the wonders and terrors of a rural upbringing are repeatedly explored and elegised.Transformation becomes translation in his more recent poems, where voices grapple with meaning itself in riddles without answers, or with various answers, and elemental tumult is harnessed into speech. ‘I‘ve tried to enact a kind of intense alertness in my poems,‘ he writes, ‘to what it‘s like to be alive and conscious and a person that the world pours into through the ears, eyes and heart‘.An ideal entry point for new readers, Selected Poems affirms Jacob Polley’s standing as one of the most gifted poets of his generation.‘Masterful‘ Stephanie Sy-Quia, The Poetry Review

Little Gods established Jacob Polley as one of the leading talents of the younger generation; his third collection sees him extend that gift in often wholly unexpected directions. As before, Polley’s work is often unashamedly lyric, and displays a virtuosic range of form and address. However, the light has changed in The Havocs: these poems are often imbued with the weird, uncanny and otherworldly, drawing on the folkloric and mythic traditions of north Britain – as well as forms from older English traditions, including riddles and cautionary tales. However oblique his strategies, Polley’s work remains fixed on our most central concerns: our losses of faith, our working lives, our irrational fears and our loves. The Havocs charts a daring new turn in the work of one of our finest English poets.

Little Gods established Jacob Polley as one of the leading talents of the younger generation; his third collection sees him extend that gift in often wholly unexpected directions. As before, Polley’s work is often unashamedly lyric, and displays a virtuosic range of form and address. However, the light has changed in The Havocs: these poems are often imbued with the weird, uncanny and otherworldly, drawing on the folkloric and mythic traditions of north Britain – as well as forms from older English traditions, including riddles and cautionary tales. However oblique his strategies, Polley’s work remains fixed on our most central concerns: our losses of faith, our working lives, our irrational fears and our loves. The Havocs charts a daring new turn in the work of one of our finest English poets.

Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.Jackself is the fourth collection from one of Britain's finest poets, and sees Jacob Polley at the height of his powers. In one of the most original books of poetry to appear in the last decade, Jackself spins a kind of 'fictionalized autobiography' through nursery rhymes, riddles and cautionary tales, and through the many 'Jacks' of our folktale, legend, phrase and fable - everyman Jacks and no one Jacks, Jackdaw, Jack-O-Lantern, Jack Sprat, Cheapjack and Jack Frost. At once playful and terrifying, lyric and narratively compelling, Jackself is an unforgettable exploration of an innocence and childhood lost in the darker corners of Reiver country and of English folklore, and once more shows Polley as one of the most remarkable imaginations at work in poetry today.T. S. Eliot judging panel described Jackself as 'a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling'.

Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.Jackself is the fourth collection from one of Britain's finest poets, and sees Jacob Polley at the height of his powers. In one of the most original books of poetry to appear in the last decade, Jackself spins a kind of 'fictionalized autobiography' through nursery rhymes, riddles and cautionary tales, and through the many 'Jacks' of our folktale, legend, phrase and fable - everyman Jacks and no one Jacks, Jackdaw, Jack-O-Lantern, Jack Sprat, Cheapjack and Jack Frost. At once playful and terrifying, lyric and narratively compelling, Jackself is an unforgettable exploration of an innocence and childhood lost in the darker corners of Reiver country and of English folklore, and once more shows Polley as one of the most remarkable imaginations at work in poetry today.T. S. Eliot judging panel described Jackself as 'a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling'.