U IS FOR UNITED KINGDOM

I was lucky enough to study with Lily at the Columbia MFA, and then commissioned by my Oxford classmate Mariah Whelan to review the book for Oxford Writers House. Here’s a snippet: “Concise as it may be, there is so much to love in this fantastic debut. Lily Blacksell’s poems, three-dimensional, ripe for the plucking, bursting with sense, are a veritable pick-n-mix of things to feel and think about while alive today, either one by one, savoring carefully, or in bulk, getting giddy with the rush. A poet in her twenties, Blacksell is yet to have her talent swell further along with the universe. It’s exciting to be able to follow it horizontally, from the very beginning, to long to learn what other skins she will shed, what different lives she will inhabit, what other records she will put on.”

There’s No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell
Published by Oxford Brookes University in 2018