In Between Two Windows, his first book of poems, Oli Hazzard takes language out to stretch and flex and bend itself into new shapes. Into the formal straits of sestinas, sonnets and pantoums stray palindromes, mirrored poems, anagrams, allusions and curiosities. His lyrics and satires dance in the spaces that open up between intention and expression, the moment when the horse attempts to throw its rider.

'Oli Hazzard brilliantly conveys the experience of experiencing; although his observations are hyper-real, he seems always to be questioning – and to be making us question – whether they are sufficiently ‘like’… His work perfectly exemplifies Touchstone’s saying that the truest poetry is the most feigning.'
Jane Griffiths

'Haunting, hilarious, exquisitely inventive, Between Two Windows is a brilliant first collection by one of the brightest young stars in the poetic firmament.'
Mark Ford

I

Moving In    
The Inability to Recall the Precise Word for Something    
True Romance    
Rule of Thumb    
Mid-Air    
Apologia    
Entre Chien et Loup    
Home Poems    
A Few Precepts    
Some Shadows    
Pantoum in Which Wallace Stevens Gives Me Vertigo    
Two Versions of ‘Fabliau of Florida’    
Badlands    
Four Landscapes    
Glasnost    
Solfege    
A Week in the Life    
Are We Not Drawn Onward, We Few, Drawn Onward to New Era?    
Outside    
Prelude to Growth    


II

Sonnet    
As Necessity Requires    
Arrival    
A Walking Bird     
To Comprehend a Nectar    
Carapace    
The Asymmetric    
Wyoming    
In Absentia    
A Later Stage of Discipline    
With Hindsight    
Three Summaries    
Martedi Grasso    
Manna    
Old-Fashioned Uncouth Measurer    
Sphinx    
Leaving the City of Acupuncture    
Kayak    


Notes