Southernmost: Sonnets by Leo Boix

Forward Prize Shortlist 2025
 
'It all happened a long time ago, no one now remembers this storylet me tell you how it all happened, how we turned unholy.'
 
In Southernmost, Leo Boix takes us on a spellbinding voyage through time and imagination, from the Argentina of his birth – ‘the end of the world, the antipode’ – to a new life in England. Unearthing an old grief, the poet embarks on a glittering, encyclopaedic exploration of his own past and the Latin America he left behind: a continent haunted by the Europeans who once fixed their telescopes on its shores.

Southernmost reveals truths hidden in plain sight: colonialism’s violent legacies; dissidents disappeared by the junta; a young mother’s mysterious decline; the clarifying sexuality of a boy whose father can’t bear to acknowledge it. At the same time, it tells a story – as sonnets have often done – about love, through Boix’s intimate and original evocation of gay marriage. Restlessly intelligent, intoxicated by Latin America’s landscapes and rich folklore, this virtuosic net of sonnets offers a glimpse of our world’s interconnecting threads.