Slide

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE SEAMUS HEANEY FIRST COLLECTION PRIZE** 'Fresh, urgent, alive... genius' PATIENCE AGBABI This assured and arresting first collection moves deftly and with purpose into private, hidden places - a locked shed, the dark of a battery farm, a murky riverbed, a late-night bar - to show, unflinchingly and in cinematic detail, what we might otherwise choose not to see. Sight is both a gift and curse, of course: given or taken away in poems of windows and curtains, torches and blindfolds, and yet here - following in the tradition of Oswald and Heaney - each image is freshly minted through a cool, objective eye. Every poem seeks to inhabit those seemingly small but pivotal moments which have monumental, sometimes mortal, consequences. For Pajak, time is fluid: a blink can be 'slow as an eclipse', our lifetimes are fleeting, our deaths often lingering and seldom peaceful or painless. Vivid and visceral, steadily examining violence, sexual encounters, childhood and ageing (a dying grandmother's 'slow pink eyelids, those quick teaspoon breaths'), cars and cities, and Nature - full of wonder and threat - Slide is always asking pertinent questions: illuminating brutality, frailty and tenderness, the responsibility of those who witness - whether voyeur, bystander or reader. This is a charged, beautifully observed and thrilling debut.

About the Author :
Mark Pajak was born in Merseyside in 1987. His work has received a Northern Writers' Award, a Society of Authors' Grant, an Eric Gregory Award and a UNESCO international writing residency. Slide was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the John Pollard International Poetry Prize and won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize.

Review :
Every spare word has been stripped ... Slide is the most polished debut here. Mark Pajak's debut does not read like a debut: there is no fumbling beginner's luck, no rough moments or threadbare patches - it's polished craftsmanship throughout is striking... Slide deserves to be a blazing success. [A] poised and visceral debut... Pajak's writing pulses with a rhythmic intensity which compels the reader not to look away. A tremendously empathetic book, it is full of compassion for people and animals, whose pain is felt vividly... Unlike so many hyped debut collections, Slide more than lives up to readers' expectations. Mark Pajak's skillful poems keep themselves open, especially to childhood and adolescent experience. Even so, they are far from frail - their insight and imaginative verve make them robust as well as eloquent. In this chilling and tense collection, Mark Pajak takes us with him into the nettles, out on the dark country lane, to the dilapidated shed - holding us with his acute precision of imagery - so we become all too aware of that "long squeal" of violence under the poem's "fluttery lid". A visceral and vital debut. I was stunned by these poems. Fresh, urgent, alive, awake, with such a strong visceral impact I couldn't sleep. Mark Pajak offers a high-res lens through which we share his vision of the suffering of children and animals. There is a fierce intelligence at play here, emotional, physical and cerebral. The combination is genius. Hands down a knockout debut, Slide isn't messing around. The poems have a live buzz and hum about them - everything is working to such precise and intense ends. Pajak's poetry is extreme, its subjects often united with elements and seasons... his stories' endings haunt the hearer like the close of a dark, irresistible song.