Couples
by Michael Stewart
'Two sheep in a field chewing, chewing, chewing until at last they can swallow.'
Couples is the latest poetry publication from award-winning writer Michael Stewart; a blackly comic sequence of poems that explore the nature of co-dependency – of two people who want to be together, but at the same time cannot help but push each other away.
The layout of the book is itself a commentary on the phenomenon – the poems are placed in their own 'couples', twelve pairs that face each other across the page. Sometimes they exchange a glance, sometimes they stand side-by-side, staring out into the abyss; only when the book is closed, and they are in darkness, do they truly come together.
“Bleak but wonderful ... familiar, and of course funny.”
— Alan Bennett
“Dark, funny and twisted, but surprisingly tender.”
— A.L. Kennedy
Edition: Paperback
Date Published: 2013-02-14
ISBN: 9781908853226
Catalogue Number: VP0042
Number of Pages: 34
Cover design by Jamie McGarry
Cover photograph by David Ruston
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