Exquisite Prisons

"Edward O'Dwyer's poems in Exquisite Prisons pack the quotidian with a creeping terror; motorists nervously migrate to investigate the car stalled at the lights, a father is filmed throwing his child higher and higher, a husband wonders if his wife also fantasises about killing him. These poems are savagely ironic, authoritative and delivered in an unsettling coaxing voice that occupies that same dazzling imaginative territory as Shirley Jackson in The Lottery." Eleanor Hooker "These are poems which explore the preciousness and unreliability of what we think of as 'the present'. They often unpick fleeting moments, but their impact is enduring. Highly recommended." Helen Mort