Chaotic Good

Winner of the Jerwood Prize for Best First Poetry Collection, granted by Forward Arts Foundation (UK)

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize (UK)

This fresh, dynamic debut poetry book from award-winning poet Isabelle Baafi explores the transformative journey of redefining one's identity following trauma and upheaval. This conversational collection simmers with energy and immediacy as it interrogates how much our identity is determined by the circumstances into which we are born. The book's five sections travel backwards and forwards in time: asking urgent questions of self-knowledge and change during a marital breakdown, revisiting the formation of a moral compass during childhood, navigating the pitfalls of powerlessness and conformity during adolescence, charting the rise and fall of a passionate marriage, and seeking revitalisation in the wake of divorce. Visceral scenes from childhood and adolescence are set against deeply resonant moments of love blossoming and love dying to explore desire, power, and self-perception in unexpected ways. This exquisite and moving collection marks the emergence of a distinctive poetic voice.

[Sample Poem]

The way you say pen
After Irene P. Mathieu's 'Soil'

it sounds like pain, as in
all I ever wanted was to live by my pain.

If you want to raze a city, all you need
is some paper and a good pain.

You once said that a woman with a pain
is like a gun who soon finds more targets than mercy.

Every day I lost another pain, but you
gave me another to take its place.

A child starts out writing in pencil,
but mastery is rewarded with a pain.

Aged six, first trip without Dad, my legs the canvas:
lightning scratched into me with my mother's pain.

My shadow from the day I learned to skip
with bloodied knees – she was my pain pal all this time.

The pain is mightier than the sword,
and twice as likely to punish its owner.

What a luxury and a curse, to live and die
by the torrent of my pain.

Rainclouds surround the registry. Organza-veiled
and blister-footed, I am yours with the flick of a pain.

'Fill out in block capitals with black ink.' Some truths
are only valid when the right pain tells them.