Arlo Parks just released her transcendent new album My Soft Machine, whose opening track “Bruiseless” is a slam-poetry supernova. So it’s not a surprise that the 2021 Mercury Prize winner just announced a poetry collection.
The Magic Border: Poetry and Fragments From My Soft Machine will arrive this fall. It features 20 new poems, as well as lyrics from her latest LP. Read her statement about the book:
“Writing poetry, to me, is about profound interiority. It is about wading into the saltwater of your own body, capillaries bursting, eyes brimming, unmoored. This collection is the fruit of that inner probing. It is a tangled mass of everything that has made me angry or giddy or low or impossibly happy to be alive. It has taken me almost [23] years to share my poetry beyond a few trusted friends. Poetry was my place, my little clearing in the forest, where I could quietly put everything I was holding. I’m not sure what gave me the courage to open up that space to you but here I am, doing it. I am proud to show you this personal lens that life shimmers through. This book is no longer mine. It is yours.”
The Magic Border: Poetry and Fragments From My Soft Machine is out 9/12 on HarperCollins, 4th Estate, and Dey Street Books. Find more information here.