Cover Reveal of my first poetry collection: 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon'

My first poetry collection is out from Seren Books next month (February 2024). The cover is an original commissioned artwork by the very talented Welsh-Italian painter Anna Amalia Coviello. 

The full list of endorsements:

John McCullough - "East of the Sun, West of the Moon is a linguistic tour-de-force. Its liquid, jazz-inspired phrasing delights with sonic leaps and swerves of imagination: ‘I let the sound stutter / let gurgles purify each bank / wobble each bridge’. In this collection, anything is possible: ‘hymns carry stadiums’ and ‘The noxious sprouts ladders’. Contemporary Cardiff becomes inextricably, joyously plaited with the Indian subcontinent: ‘Dravidic tongues / inflect Kerala, shatter invisible / coconuts into tales // circulating Lidl and the Woodville’. There are shadows here too, racist violence exposed alongside ‘Bodies winter scrubbed / toothpaste white’. The overall effect is the creation of a rich, distinctive poetic universe, at times evoking brutality but throughout teeming with vitality and heart."

Jeremy Noel-Tod - "It's a thrill to read the poems in Taz Rahman's debut collection, which play with the syllables of languages as though they were particles -- that is, the matter of the world around us. And what a lavish, shining place it is: centered on the city of Cardiff, these poems use their freely mouthed musicality and fluent sensory associations to locate life in Wales within ever-widening circles of world -- and vice versa. Composed daringly and hopefully 'to the / chime of ropey leashes clattering flagpoles', this is a book that modern British poetry has long needed, and which readers will richly enjoy."

Jon Gower - "In vivifying and vital language here are poems that hymn nature into being, riffing on the complexities and inter-lockings of life (as they tell of briars that perspire and black grouse displaced to the ocean.) This debut is deceptive, for here is no novice but rather an artist in full song, whose palette is exhilaratingly vivid. Here, Rahman paints us the world in all the colours of grammar, discovery and truth. A marvellous, marvelling collection to both savour and hold close."

Robert Minhinnick - "For a first collection this is highly ambitious, and I find that admirable. There are many words new to me, yet Taz Rahman’s poetry  - based on both very long- and short-lined pieces -  celebrates rituals, especially linked with foods and family. It is in this ritualistic formality his best writing lies. Certainly a writer to watch." 

Gillian Clarke - "So satisfying to see such wide and various use of form and language in a pleasing first collection"

'East of the Sun, West of the Moon' can be pre-ordered from Seren Books: https://www.serenbooks.com/book/east-of-the-sun-west-of-the-moon/