Cowboy
Kandace Siobhan Walker
The poems in Cowboy are knowing, millennial, internet-sick, funny, with deep currents – of embodied and disembodied spiritualities; familial mythologies; grief and longing; navigating diagnoses; early and enduring disappointment; the wildness underneath the smooth glass-and-chrome surfaces of contemporary life.
The echo of a question permeates the collection – where does a person grow up? – moving restlessly between rural Wales, London and the American South; between the esoteric spaces of the internet; between the artlessness of childhood and adolescence transfigured inexplicably into a disquieting adulthood, with its attendant weirdness of rent-paying, cohabiting, the churn of mindless work and alienation.
The generous abundance of Cowboy’s references – memes, early noughties television shows, pop songs, cities and their suburbs, video games – bring anxiety and pressure, joy and glory to this singularly impressive debut.
PUBLISHED ON: 07/09/23
£11.00
Praise for Cowboy
SHORTLISTED for THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION
'This debut is hilarious, moving and dazzlingly new ... Cowboy marks the entry of a significant and exciting new voice into British poetry.' – Rebecca Tamás, Guardian
‘A truly dazzling debut, full of utterly inventive and original work … Walker’s voice is at once razor sharp and enigmatic, a sophisticated blend of control and swagger that gives the collection an assurance beyond its years.’ – Jane Yeh
‘A phenomenal debut. Walker’s voice speaks so sharply not just to this generation but also to generations past and to whatever will follow.’ – Gboyega Odubanjo
‘Cowboy is breathtaking in its depth, rootedness and conjurings … Kandace Siobhan Walker’s exquisite touch both harnesses and transforms tradition. Certainly one of the best poets of her generation.’ – Lillian Allen, Poet Laureate of Toronto
‘Electrifying, shocking even … attuned precisely to the slippery present moment, reminding us that a poem might awaken something important or urgent within.’ – Richard Scott
About the author
Kandace Siobhan Walker is a writer and artist of Canadian, Jamaican, Gullah-Geechee and Welsh heritage. She is an editor at bath magg. In 2021, she was an Eric Gregory Award recipient and the winner of the White Review Poet’s Prize, and a poetry pamphlet, Kaleido, was published by Bad Betty Press in 2022. Cowboy is her first book. She lives in London.