Altar by Desree

Shortlisted for Forward Prize Best First Collection 2025
Poetry Book Society Reconmmendation
 
The debut poetry collection from award-winning writer and spoken word artist, Desree, Altar explores multifaceted dimensions of sacrifice, challenging its heroism and examining its ties to servility. The poems in Altar urge their protagonists to play neither lion nor lamb, but to live and flourish on their own terms. Each page glimmers with vivid, often devastating vignettes: we witness the resilience of youth, the strength of the Black female body, the complexity of chosen and unchosen family, the sweeping effects of gentrification.

Through reflections on Black British identity, queer joy, place and belonging, faith and consent, Desree invites the reader on a journey of reclamation, while her wry wit and disarming tenderness hold us through the necessary storms that mark the way.
 
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"A collection of wonder and witness. These poems - both powerful and tender - grapple with the parallels of life and death, the body and spirit, loss and love, and demand a response." Rachel Long
 
"This is thrilling writing. Unexpected, alive, and curious. Desree enters the page, stage left." Joelle Taylor