All The Men I Never Married

“Moore’s poetic testimonials expose the underbelly of society’s misogynist micro infractions. These deceptively plaintive lyrics are fraught hymns that testifies, catalogues, and interrogates the policing of women’s bodies in contemporary society. Her poetic witnessing excavates these ordinary infractions committed daily alongside the ensuring silences that haunt women’s desires and exploit their vulnerabilities. Her provocative poems are urgent and necessary and vital.” 

“From the first time I heard Kim Moore read some of these poems, I knew the collection which followed must be a classic. I love the times in these poems – such as the moment in the first poem when a list of former loves gives way to the extraordinary lyric line ‘all we are to each other is ghosts’ – when, without turning away for a second from any of life’s realities, experience is rendered completely beautiful. These deeply empathetic and unforgettable poems go everywhere, see everything and one feels, again and again in this collection, that a poet of the greatest gifts is addressing the most important of subjects, for all of us. We meet these transcendent, vital poems with gratitude and celebration.” 

“All the Men I Never Married is absolutely gripping; I’ve been reading and rereading it obsessively. Moore’s dazzling catalogue of poems swivels the spotlight onto her male subjects with a lyricism and genius “as high and bright as a lantern”. Sometimes nostalgic, sometimes wounded, and sometimes furious, these are searing, musical reckonings with the indifferent lovers, the misogynists, the gorgeous wonders, the heartbreakers, the stalkers, the drinkers, the inspirational teachers, and the abusers we still fear, as Moore confronts both the major harms and the frustrating coercions of being female in a male-dominant world. We are tired of being threatened and hurt, tired of being talked at, tired of being told what we ought to mean; these sublime poems say it all, and it feels like rain after drought, a beautiful release. This book is a revolutionary and subversive requisition of the female gaze, and it will be canonical.”

“Kim Moore’s brave and honest poems engage the reader in a comprehensive feminist vision that challenges the roles assigned to women in a dominantly patriarchal society and exposes the contradictions and violence in such a society … Moore’s collection hits all the right notes in a wide-ranging view that is both lyrical and actual, as well as relevant to our time. It has that dreamlike quality, which good poetry often has, involving the reader in an imaginary world that is also the world we experience, challenging and reversing common views. Her vision is therefore incisive and crisp and invites us to act and to voice who we are.”

“A remarkable and very readable book about “a gallery of exes and significant others” … this collection is fascinating, and is published in a climate of still smouldering anger, outrage and fear in the wake of the appalling murder of Sarah Everard. I will be surprised if it is not shortlisted for an award or two. It certainly should be.”

“Sharp, searing, filled with an unflinching honesty yet wrapped, also, in a sublime sense of the lyrical – Moore is a master of pace and tempo, with a strong sense of how words fall on the ear as well as work on the page.”

“Kim Moore’s second collection ‘All the Men I Never Married’ is both devastating and devastatingly well written … If this poetry collection were a concert it would be a virtuoso performance warranting a standing ovation, bravo Kim Moore.”

“Kim Moore’s brave and open-hearted new collection does not offer any form of resolution to the significant questions it sets itself, but rather a working through of continuing anxieties and turmoil. Her disparate use of form stresses mending at point of fracture, of bones knitting but leaving surrounding scar tissue. And we should not underestimate her skill at formal representation which is often manifested in broken lines, radical indentation and reinforcement by repetition, as though to circumscribe defiance in a tempered framework, whilst letting insecurity in like a breeze through unglazed windows.”

“Rarely has it been more important to read a poetry collection in the sequence the poet has ordered; there are no lines to be skimmed … in these shocking, and yet ultimately hopeful poems, there is not a space or comma wasted either. Moore the musician-poet has phrased and paced her detonations both formally and superbly. Fiona Benson describes All the Men I Never Married as ‘revolutionary and […]will be canonical’.  Yes. It surely deserves to be.”

“For variety of technique, richness of imagery and sheer thematic coherence, Kim Moore’s volume well deserves a place on the required reading list … There’s a swagger and confidence to Moore’s verse that refuses to be victimised, even in her saddest and bleakest poems, and it’s what will make this collection stand out in a crowded field.”

“These are lyrical poems, designed to be heard as well as read. They are poems that speak with a clear, unapologetic, feminist voice, breaking the taboos of acceptance and denial … This collection is bursting with playfulness and irony, expressing uncomfortable truths about the culture in which we live through poems that shimmer and stretch before your eyes. It’s a book that will make you reconsider your own assumptions, from one poem to the next. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”

“I’ve been following Moore’s work for a few years and she remains, in my estimation, one of the United Kingdom’s most compelling poets. I’ve never read a mediocre poem by this poet and whenever I see her name on a publication, I don’t know exactly what I am in for, but I know I will be led.”