Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021The Actual is a symphony
of personal and political fury--sometimes probing delicately, sometimes
burning with raw energy. In 55 poems that swerve and crackle with a rare
music, Inua Ellams unleashes a full-throated assault on empire and its
legacies of racism, injustice and toxic masculinity.
Written on the author's phone, in transit, between meetings, before
falling asleep and just after waking, this is poetry as polemic, as an
act of resistance, but also as dream-vision. At its heart, this book
confronts the absolutism and 'foolish machismo' of hero culture--from
Perseus to Trump, from Batman to Boko Haram. Through the thick gauze of
history, these breathtaking poems look the world square in the face and
ask, "What the actual--?"
"This is what poetry looks like when you have nothing to lose, when you
speak from the heart, when you have spent years honing your craft so
that you can be free. This is what poetry looks like when you are a
word-sorcerer, a linguistic swordsman, a metaphor-dazzler, a passionate
creator of poetry as fire, as lament, as beauty, as reflection, as
argument, as home. I was blown away by this book."
