Luke Kennard – författare

In Luke Kennard's audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor's childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation . . . A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.

'The funniest and smartest novel I've read in a while' ZADIE SMITH'Black Bag made me laugh aloud dozens and dozens of times. It's brilliant, a triumph of a book . . . I loved its inventive originality and its ambition: it is very powerfully worth your time' KATHERINE RUNDELL'A campus novel for our end times . . . Black Bag fizzes with wit and invention and winningly communicates a very human concern for meaning and connection' Observer 'A triumph of deadpan comedy . . . As surreal and ambitious as Tom McCarthy's Remainder, only written by someone with the comic instincts of Peep Show's Jesse Armstrong . . . [Kennard is] so generous with the jokes that I found myself laughing on almost every page. A brilliant comic tour de force' Sunday Times'Hilarious and poignant . . . Luke's prose ripples with unusual images and wry aphorisms. The tone throughout is delightfully mordant. This is a very modern novel with a comfortingly familiar core: that of an ode to the importance of friendship, tenderness and love' TLS'Very, very funny' GQA penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor's childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation . . . A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.

Black Mirror meets David Nicholls in this dark and funny novel about love in dystopian times LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE FOR FICTION Karl has let his debts get wildly out of control and, in desperation, has sort of semi-accidentally committed credit-card fraud. Now he could have to go to prison, so when he and his wife Genevieve are instead offered a place on a mysterious self-improvement scheme called The Transition, they agree. It’s only six months, after all, and at first all it requires is that they give up their credit cards and move into the spare room of their ‘mentors’, Janna and Stu, who seem perfectly lovely . . . ‘A total page-turner’ Nathan Filer , author of The Shock of the Fall ‘The sort of book that has you walking blindly through seven lanes of traffic with your face pressed obliviously to the page’ The Times‘Very funny, compassionate and scathing. Just the ticket for fans of Jonathan Coe’ Laline Paull, author of The Bees‘Richly enjoyable, tenderly devastating’ Guardian

Black Mirror meets David Nicholls in this dark and funny novel about love in dystopian times LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE FOR FICTION Karl has let his debts get wildly out of control and, in desperation, has sort of semi-accidentally committed credit-card fraud. Now he could have to go to prison, so when he and his wife Genevieve are instead offered a place on a mysterious self-improvement scheme called The Transition, they agree. It’s only six months, after all, and at first all it requires is that they give up their credit cards and move into the spare room of their ‘mentors’, Janna and Stu, who seem perfectly lovely . . .‘Very funny’ William Boyd, Guardian best summer reads 2018 ‘A total page-turner’ Nathan Filer , author of The Shock of the Fall ‘The sort of book that has you walking blindly through seven lanes of traffic with your face pressed obliviously to the page’ The Times‘Very funny, compassionate and scathing. Just the ticket for fans of Jonathan Coe’ Laline Paull, author of The Bees‘Richly enjoyable, tenderly devastating’ Guardian

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZEWhat’s standing between you and success?What do you do with a generation who’ve had everything, but still can’t grow up?Welcome to The Transition.While taking part in The Transition you and your partner will spend six months living under the supervision of your mentors, two successful adults of a slightly older generation. Freed from your financial responsibilities, you will be coached through the key areas of the scheme – Employment, Nutrition, Responsibility, Relationship, Finances and Self-Respect – until you are ready to be reintegrated into adult society.At the end of your six months – who knows what discoveries you’ll have made about yourself? The ‘friends’ you no longer need. The talents you’ll have found time to nurture. The business you might have kick-started.Who knows where you’ll be?‘Very funny’ William Boyd, Guardian best summer reads 2018‘A fresh, funny and gripping vision of the near future that rings frighteningly true’ Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine‘Terrific. Clever and funny and a total page-turner to boot’ Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall‘Utterly vital’ Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies‘Essential reading for generation rent’ Jenn Ashworth, author of Fell

A heartbreakingly moving and hilariously funny novel about marriage, parenting, love, desire and betrayal. ‘Captivating’ Ruth Jones, author of Us Three‘Tremendous’ William Boyd author of Any Human Heart‘Funny, wry, unsettling’ Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the FallEmily should be happy. She has a nice husband (even if they rarely speak to each other, let alone sleep in the same bed), two little boys she loves (even if a full night’s sleep is a distant memory) – and now, a brand-new house in which they can live out all of the bourgeois fantasies she knows she should be ashamed of. But still she aches for something more.Enter Alathea and Elliott, their new neighbours, and also parents of two young boys. Alathea is intimidatingly confident and beautiful, but also disarmingly open and friendly. And Elliott … Elliott is intriguing. Dishevelled, talented, charming and a little lost, he seems as fascinated by Emily as she is by him, and soon their friendship has reached an intensity neither of them seem able to control.As riotously funny as it is painfully moving, this is a novel about disappointment and yearning; about parenting and growing up; and the search for love, meaning and connection.

A heartbreakingly moving and hilariously funny novel about marriage, parenting, love, desire and betrayal.‘Captivating’ Ruth Jones, author of Us Three ‘Tremendous’ William Boyd author of Any Human Heart‘Funny, wry, unsettling’ Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the FallEmily should be happy. She has a nice husband (even if they rarely speak to each other, let alone sleep in the same bed), two little boys she loves (even if a full night’s sleep is a distant memory) – and now, a brand-new house in which they can live out all of the bourgeois fantasies she knows she should be ashamed of. But still she aches for something more.Enter Alathea and Elliott, their new neighbours, and also parents of two young boys. Alathea is intimidatingly confident and beautiful, but also disarmingly open and friendly. And Elliott … Elliott is intriguing. Dishevelled, talented, charming and a little lost, he seems as fascinated by Emily as she is by him, and soon their friendship has reached an intensity neither of them seem able to control.As riotously funny as it is painfully moving, this is a novel about disappointment and yearning; about parenting and growing up; and the search for love, meaning and connection.

Luke Kennard's Planet Shaped Horse is an unhinged blackcomedy poemplay from one of contemporary poetry's most unique voices. When the (anti)hero of the piece is enduring a somewhat 'enforced' stay at Fouracres Halfway House, entanglements ensue. Both terrible and beautiful things happen.Hermits and doctors are not what they seem and neither Miranda nor Simon seem capable of reining in or reforming their unreliable narrator...

‘Kennard’s distinctive voice – surreal, funny, anxious, always overthinking, and cringingly self-deprecating – has made him one of the most widely liked and imitated British poets’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, TLSA Telegragh, Irish Times, Guardian and The Week Book of the YearFrom the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Black BagNone of the Old Testament prophets were especially happy or confident in their calling, but Jonah was the only one who rejected it outright, disobeying direct instruction from God and literally running away. In The Book of Jonah, Luke Kennard transforms the unique and awkward position Jonah’s story occupies in scripture – part dream, part joke, part provocation – into a madcap picaresque which marries the sacred and the absurd.Though Jonah’s encounter with the whale is most commonly interpreted as the story of a reluctant prophet being punished by his maker, Kennard’s Jonah is more wily business traveller than seer. Taking his instruction instead from non-governmental organizations, arts development agencies and public-relations gurus, this Jonah keeps relentlessly busy, accepting any assignment that will take him further away from Nineveh and drown out the word of God in his ears. On his travels he meets errant writers, fixers, artists and consultants, but nobody who can give him a sense of what his work might be beyond a five-star capitalist purgatory in a series of exotic locations. What would it mean to be a prophet – or even a false prophet – in this milieu?Taking on the decimation of funding for the arts, the emptiness of the hero’s journey and a literary culture regarded by wider society with cynicism, ignorance and apathy, The Book of Jonah is a blistering poetry collection from the Forward Prize-winning author of Notes on the Sonnets.'Brilliant . . . Deadly serious in the way only the playfully comic can be, the poems here are liable to leave you both smiling and wincing in the same breath' – Rishi Dastidar, Telegraph'A fun, testing read – rather like being regaled at the pub by a tipsy Theology professor' – Telegraph, Books of the Year

Shortlisted for The Forward Poetry Prize 2007Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet, critic and short-fiction writer. He works as a research student and assistant teacher at the University of Exeter. He is an award-winning man.His first award-winning collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers was published by Stride Books in 2005 and won an award. He has worked as regional editor for Succour, a biannual journal of poetry and short fiction based at the University of Sussex and as an associated reader for The Kenyon Review. He is currently reviews editor of Exultations and Difficulties. His award-winning poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals. He exists in a permanent state of award-winning; he is like a giant magnet for awards or, if awards are moths, a giant light.His award-winning work for the stage has been written with and performed by the theatre company Pegabovine in Bristol, Birmingham, London, Scarborough (as part of the National Student Drama Festival, 2003 and 2004, wherein it won an award) and at the Edinburgh International Fringe (wherein it did not win an award). The Sunday Times described their work as “wit of a different order”, but did not specify which one. Chortle magazine described it as “delightful” – which is probably less equivocal. He is constantly decorated for his achievements in the form of awards – which he has won, does win and will continue to win, because he is a winner. What a guy.Luke Kennard is tall, nervous, polite and frequently scorches the end of his nose. He was educated at Holyrood Community School and the University of Exeter. He is married and lives in Devon, birthplace of the memorial bench. Essentially a lower-middle class purist, his favourite canapé is the cocktail sausage roll. He will probably have rosettes and medals incorporated into his gravestone, somehow.Luke Kennard, award-winner, won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2005. This has been described as a travesty and a slap in the face for writers of genuine talent. Ever since he has been forced to travel under a false name and wear nose-moustache-glasses for fear of being assaulted by embittered poets, young and old. I suppose he could just smash them in the head with one of his awards. He was received by the Orthodox church in 2006 and is working on his humility.

Like a toboggan of wolves who have eaten their driver, The Solex Brothers rushes blindly through the forest, drawing on the tropes and archetypes of folk tales, parables, political manifestos, philosophical tracts and grammar. Unlike a toboggan of wolves, The Solex Brothers explores the fate of the individual – albeit a rather feeble individual – and of personal responsibility in a culture of absurd, inexorable forces. Farce navigating towards moral absolution in narratives at once Fauvist and Baroque, expunging the twee with a reformist's remorseless vigour; cherishing its influences with a poststructuralist’s vertical rigour; and, at times, chasing its tail with a schoolboy’s reductive snigger. Like a toboggan of wolves who are beginning to regret having set-upon and eaten their driver, the world of “The Solex Brothers” is funny, sad and irretrievably lost

A combination of verse and prose poetry, ‘The Migraine Hotel’ is Luke Kennard’s third collection and very much a sequel to ‘The Harbour Beyond the Movie’. The voices continue to explore the territory opened up by Harbour, at once satiric, stricken, sincere and bitingly sarcastic, combined with a kaleidoscopic range of ways of engaging with a poem as a reader. The prose poems are prose poems in the tradition of Baudelaire, which is to say they read more like grouchy comic monologues with unreliable narrators than prose-verse characterised by excessive lyricism.

This is Luke Kennard’s fourth collection of poetry and departs from his previous work in its scope and outlook. The prose poems and dramatic monologues run deeper and, the verse more personal. It is unmistakably a Kennard book (the wolf appears here in his sixth outing), but there is also a striving to turn away from the self-referential games and literary in-jokes of Kennard’s previous work and look outward; an attempt to grow something in the personal ground broken by the last two collections, without sacrificing the wit and energy.

LUKE KENNARD''s first pamphlet in six years – Truffle Hound – kicked off our experimental pamphlet series with a bang in 2018. More resolutely prose than any of his previous books of poetry (although not his novel) here Luke allows his childhood (imagined or otherwise) to flood into the foreground, while his present (factual or fake news) distorts and fractures as if his life were being directed by David Lynch and Terry Gilliam and neither could agree whether horror or comedy should dominate. Dogs, cigarettes, children and pills shouldn''t really be permitted to mix should they? Here they are a heady mixture indeed!With that nonchalant way that Luke has of seeming to toss words as if they were his hair, Truffle Hound piles neuroses on top of neuroses (not necessarily Luke''s) as it tackles subjects as wildly varying and yet somehow connected as over the counter pain-killers, the domestic struggles of humans on other planets, scathing criticism (both literary and personal), transistor radios and shops – an inordinate amount of shops. (The shops are where you can buy the pills and cigarettes and food for the dogs.)We found out today that in some colleges across the land, a certain kind of poetic output is sometimes described as being Kennardian. We don''t know if Truffle Hound is Kennardian or not. (Perhaps it is Neo-Kennardian?) But we are hoping that one day soon, something, somewhere, of very little interest if needs be, will be referred to as Vervian. We are hoping this a lot.Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist. His books have been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He lectures in the School of English at the University of Birmingham.

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021Longlisted for the Rathbones folio prizeA Poetry Book society RecommendationLuke Kennard recasts Shakespeare's 154 sonnets as a series of anarchic prose poems set in the same joyless house party.A physicist explains dark matter in the kitchen. A crying man is consoled by a Sigmund Freud action figure. An out-of-hours doctor sells phials of dark red liquid from a briefcase. Someone takes out a guitar.Wry, insolent and self-eviscerating, Notes on the Sonnets riddles the Bard with the anxieties of the modern age, bringing Kennard''s affectionate critique to subjects as various as love, marriage, God, metaphysics and a sad horse.'Luke Kennard has the uncanny genius of being able to stick a knife in your heart with such originality and verve that you start thinking "aren''t knives fascinating... and hearts, my god!" whilst everything slowly goes black.'- Caroline Bird

A heartbreakingly moving and hilariously funny novel about marriage, parenting, love, desire and betrayal. ‘Captivating’ Ruth Jones, author of Us Three‘Tremendous’ William Boyd author of Any Human Heart‘Funny, wry, unsettling’ Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the FallEmily should be happy. She has a nice husband (even if they rarely speak to each other, let alone sleep in the same bed), two little boys she loves (even if a full night’s sleep is a distant memory) – and now, a brand-new house in which they can live out all of the bourgeois fantasies she knows she should be ashamed of. But still she aches for something more.Enter Alathea and Elliott, their new neighbours, and also parents of two young boys. Alathea is intimidatingly confident and beautiful, but also disarmingly open and friendly. And Elliott … Elliott is intriguing. Dishevelled, talented, charming and a little lost, he seems as fascinated by Emily as she is by him, and soon their friendship has reached an intensity neither of them seem able to control.As riotously funny as it is painfully moving, this is a novel about disappointment and yearning; about parenting and growing up; and the search for love, meaning and connection.

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021Longlisted for the Rathbones folio prizeA Poetry Book society RecommendationLuke Kennard recasts Shakespeare's 154 sonnets as a series of anarchic prose poems set in the same joyless house party.A physicist explains dark matter in the kitchen. A crying man is consoled by a Sigmund Freud action figure. An out-of-hours doctor sells phials of dark red liquid from a briefcase. Someone takes out a guitar.Wry, insolent and self-eviscerating, Notes on the Sonnets riddles the Bard with the anxieties of the modern age, bringing Kennard’s affectionate critique to subjects as various as love, marriage, God, metaphysics and a sad horse.'Luke Kennard has the uncanny genius of being able to stick a knife in your heart with such originality and verve that you start thinking “aren’t knives fascinating... and hearts, my god!” whilst everything slowly goes black.'- Caroline Bird