Books

Abi Curtis’ first novel, Water & Glass, is out now, published by Cloud Lodge Books

“An antediluvian thriller; an eco-disaster; a devastating love story; a conspiracy; a zoological dystopia. Speculative fiction is nothing without a beating heart, something real and human (or animal) at stake, and Water & Glass has this in boatloads. On every page Curtis combines a poet’s eye for the perfect, resonant detail with a blockbuster’s suspense and delivery on story. All the better that a large part of the narrative is facilitated by a woolly rat with a GoPro. As beautifully surreal and symbolic as it gets, there’s something unshakeably, alarmingly plausible about  this novel and its dramatisation of the next century: what we stand to lose and what may already be too late to save. An urgent, gorgeously written debut.”

— Luke Kennard, 2017 (Author of The Transition)

The Glass Delusion (2012) Salt Publishing

Winner of a 2013 Somerset Maugham Award

‘A stunning collection of fierce, rugged & muscular new poetry.’ (Somerset Maugham judges)

Tender, surprising, funny and sad, the poems of The Glass Delusion demonstrate a range of preoccupations, passions and interests unique in contemporary poetry. In its fascination with the who (wittily explored in ‘Marrying Doctor Who’) and the what (the quiddity of a giant squid in the stunning poem, ‘Squiddity’), with history and the everyday, Abi Curtis’s poetry has a strange beauty, a precision and reserve reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop. This is a remarkable volume. -Nicholas Royle, author of The Uncanny

These highly imaginative scenarios have the jubilation of discovery being made on the hoof. The poems are daring, wondrous and unexpectedly funny. Reading Curtis is like being blown offwards by a whisper. -Daljit Nagra

If Abi Curtis’s first collection plotted a course through myths both personal and legendary, The Glass Delusion wanders off from the breadcrumb trail altogether and finds its own way home through the forest of our collective unconscious. Reading her is to be reminded of the mystery of every living creature, to awake from your own delusions to find that reality is even stranger. -Luke Kennard

These poems playfully and tenderly blur the border between fact and fantasy, imbuing true stories with a melancholy magic and establishing fables which feel all too true. – Antony Dunn

Unexpected Weather (2009) Salt Publishing

Winner of the Crashaw Prize 2008