Life Immediately is a pacy, dynamic debut collection containing all the preoccupations of Lily Blacksell’s work, from womanhood, to music, to the natural world and our calamitous dealings with it, to the calamity and comedy of human relationships, romantic or otherwise.
In eclectic, formally confident poems, balancing keen observation with wry insouciance, Blacksell’s writing showcases the expansiveness of language, but also its failures. Communication builds up and breaks down, geese honk, hangovers linger. Figures from Madonna to Magwitch appear, but not necessarily as you know them. Familiar settings – the pub, the library, the farmyard, the house party – are made strange. These are ranging poems with a rangy humour, and warmth as well as wit.