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Father's Father's Father

Dane Holt

Cover of Father’s Father’s Father by Dane Holt
Categories: 21st Century, British, First Collections
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (72 pages)
(Due Mar 2025)
9781800174689
£11.99 £10.79
  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • A Poetry Book Society Recommendation Spring 2025

    Dane Holt’s subject is often the aftermath of tragedy – ecological, personal or social – but these poems grieve in surprising ways. Deflection, displacement and refracted voices combine to animate a world of brilliantly realised situations. And Holt’s characters, though always articulate, do not precisely comprehend their own relation to what they inherit. Compelling, funny, endlessly inventive, this bold debut collection explores the formation and disillusion of masculinity and community, exposing just how tender and brittle these constructs are.
    Dane Holt holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast. His debut pamphlet, Many Professional Wrestlers Never Retire (Lifeboat Press), was published in 2023 and was a Poetry Book Society Autumn Pamphlet Choice. In 2019, he won the inaugural Brotherton Prize, awarded by the University of Leeds. He was the 2023 Ciaran ... read more
    Awards won by Dane Holt Commended, 2025 A Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation
    (Father's Father's Father)
    'In Dane Holt's Father's Father's Father there are delicate parables, surreal narrations, moving and direct lyrics, and cameos from unexpected quarters (Tammy Wynette? John Cena?), but wherever the poems go, the tone is convincing, the line controlled, and a lovely obliquity pushes against the emotional pressure. It's a wonderfully inventive and auspicious debut.'
    Nick Laird
    'Dane Holt zooms us through the chaos of grief, suspends us from our heels and makes us weep, then forces us to laugh against our will. One of the best debuts I've read in years.'
    Caroline Bird
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