the necessary line

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"Familiar and yet strange... Allen's poetry looks at the world afresh and hands it to us, without judgement, like we're seeing it for the first time. This is not so much a book of words but of language itself, moulded with a sculptor's precision. There is a presence in these poems that was here long before us and will be here long after we've gone. Unafraid to ask difficult questions, these poems often bristle with vulnerability. This collection welcomes you in from the cold again and again and then throws you back out into the rain. At its best, this is poetry on the very edge, handled with rare skill. These poems set out in search of something and discover more than they could ever have hoped to find." Tom Weir "Nick Allen's the necessary line is a deft manoeuvre on the tightrope between tenderness and angst; Hiroshima and Grenfell jostle agains fjords and night skies; the pleasures of the flesh interrogate existential moments of alienation. Despite finding 'a violent ringing emptiness/at the heart of everything,' the collection is mostly a celebration of love, of life, and of words." Hannah Stone Published by Half Moon Books, 2017 ISBN 978-0-9957642-4-8 Show more