In Afterburn, his first collection since Shingle Street (2015), Blake Morrison returns to poetry, his first calling, to offer scenes from his own life and the lives of others. In psychology, ‘afterburn’ refers to the period of time before a past event is assimilated: an idea that resonates through these poems – which themselves linger after reading – about memories and our human attempts to articulate, shape or contain them.
Here you are, on the balcony,
the sea serenading you,
the sun with its armful of light.
Revisiting past and alternate selves, the poet dives back into the unassuming stream of our dailiness, to see with new eyes the turning points in a lifetime’s accidental course. What holds these wise, touching, joyful poems together are the small intimacies that bind us to others, under time’s lengthening shadow: ‘you moved too fast for me to catch you / and so did the years.’
Publisher : Chatto & Windus
Publication date : 29 Jan. 2026
From many outlets including Amazon