Poetry
Category: Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 74
ISBN: 9781781727447
Publication date: July 15, 2024
Price: £10.99
Poetry Book Society Autumn Recommendation 2024
“By turns thrilling and terrifying, sensual and celestial…” – Chen Chen
Lorcán Black’s Strange Husbandry, contrasts modern-day stories of queer passion with older stories from myth and history. Strange Husbandry is rooted in the city of London during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic and the beginning of war in Ukraine, and it is a strange moment in the metropolis characterised by lockdown, missing persons and terror attacks. Black’s world is indeed a place where care is needed, and the quality of care in these poems means acknowledging the pain and precariousness that exist in both personal stories and external conflicts.
Figures from myth offer larger-than-life stories about passion and love, which might teach us something about how we live our lives today. Stories of Circe turning men into pigs, the wily Salome, or Juno having her revenge on Io, channel anger and the instinct for survival, reminding us of the human hurt behind actions that may initially seem morally dubious. Alongside mythical tales are woven modern stories of queer love and passion, pinpointing the joys and difficulties of tending to these relationships in a heteronormative society.
Family appears in the collection, in a poem dedicated to the poet’s sister, or in ‘Louise, No Matter What Happens, I’m Glad I Came with You’, the poet and his mother are compared to the dynamic duo in the movie, Thelma and Louise. In ‘A Poem in the Voice of My Dead Uncle’, the uncle reimagines what being a man might look like: ‘My heart is learning to be a butterfly.’ Compassion for men damaged by a toxic kind of masculinity extends to a broader context too, so ‘Sweetbread’ tells of Ukrainian compassion for a captured Russian boy-soldier, too young to understand the why and how of the violence he has been asked to commit.
The title poem ‘Strange Husbandry’ struggles with jealousy as it depicts a relationship with a lover who continues to keep a sexual partner from the past on the hook. Via a sensuous celebration of queer eroticism, the poem asks the lover not to be cruel, but to adopt a queer husbandry, which means not vanilla monogamy, but a deep, erotic connection.
Without minimising the cruelness and hurt of worlds, modern and historical, Strange Husbandry suggests the possibility nevertheless of a queer quality of care, where we manage our impact and are open to others.
Lorcán Black
Lorcán Black is an Irish poet. His poetry has been published in The Tomahawk Review, Stirring, Letters Journal, The Rush, Grim & Gilded, New Writing Scotland, Snapdragon, Connecticut River Review, Northern New England Review, The Los Angeles Review & The Stinging Fly, amongst numerous others.
He is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and has been longlisted and shortlisted for the Two Sylvias Prize and The Paris Literary Prize respectively.
His first collection, Rituals, was published by April Gloaming Publishing in 2019.
“…this collection finds its centre in the body, as though this were holy ground, a place of sanctuary in times of trouble… There’s a beautiful queer theology, history and mythology abounding through these poems, Strange Husbandry shows love that is difficult to understand, unfamiliar and alien but always endeavouring to cultivate something new.”
Roy McFarlane, Poetry Book Society
“Strange Husbandry is pure alchemy. It takes a handful of rubble, witnesses its memory and pain, and then transforms it into something to be kept—placed into a museum where we, the reader, can return to it again and again to remind ourselves what we have overcome. Something new is happening here—something magical and made out of what has been lost. It’s important that we take notice. Black is a poet whose name we will remember for a long time.”
Kailey Tedesco
“Through pandemic isolation and upheaval; through the glitter and gutters of London; through spectral exes and spectacular new love; through the guts of night, the self, Tori Amos, and the moon, Strange Husbandry sings. This is a book that won’t stop singing and you won’t be able to stop listening…”
Chen Chen
“Lorcan Black’s much-anticipated second collection, Strange Husbandry, gathers together a symphony of voices—iconic figures of history, mythology, religion—to offer insight into human pain and wonder. Against the backdrop of the past, Black considers the present—illness, war, and whatever love we can find here. These urgent poems are warnings, confessions, declarations, and blessings. I feel them, sensorial and lyric, within my own body.”
Blas Falconer
“Lucid and lively by turns, Strange Husbandry explores darkness but ends in light, lifting the reader to a “Next New Testament” that is, in general, jubilant and joyous.”
Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
