I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken

Publishes 26 March 
 
A collection of pitch-perfect prose poems written in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic stroke. From the author of cult poetry bestseller, Crush

Richard Siken's Crush was an underground international sensation. Twenty years on, he returns with the momentous I Do Know Some Things, cinematic in its tragic vision and emotive force. In the aftermath of a stroke, the poet's language and much of his memory is, for a time, wiped out.

As his mind gropes its way back from oblivion, the scenery flickers between memories of a ruptured childhood and queer coming-of-age, and the precipice of the present. Each poem is a room in a 'house owned by ghosts'. In these seventy-seven prose poems, Siken has forged a new voice at once terrifying and vital.

Brave in content and in method, I Do Know Some Things demands his recognition as an essential poet of our times.
 
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'What happens when language is let into places where words fail? Here, a transportive experience: naked, vertiginous, defiant ― an astonishing illumination of the possibilities in being beside oneself' ― Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Deep House

'This is writing as rebuilding, each sentence placed unwaveringly on the page. . .Siken is a deadpan virtuoso of the wrongfooting observation, his prose flickering between confessions. . . A spectacular comeback' - Jeremy Noel-Tod, Prospect

'A remarkable return that thrums with reinvention: of the self, of the prose poem, of the false divide between the everyday and the surreal. Very engaging and exciting’ ― Andrew McMillan
 
'Siken's signature intensity still throbs between sentences.' - The Yale Review