Rabbitbox - Wayne Holloway-Smith

`Powerful. Intense and unforgettable' MAX PORTER`I'm blown away. An astonishing work' AMY KEY`Amazing. Truly a feat' RAYMOND ANTROBUS`Devastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles' Guardian--A transfixing, heart-rending work which follows a mother and her young son living under the shadow of an all-consuming domestic threat, by T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Wayne Holloway-Smith. 24 Coalbrook Street. The house is trembling with a father's anger. It makes a rabbit of a young boy,�sends him burrowing into a wardrobe, and leaves his mother standing hapless and mute over the kitchen sink. In this house, how far can a mother's comfort travel? From the safety of his hiding place, from the magnitude of his fear, a young girl appears offering a way out. Taking him by the hand, reaching through time, she leads him elsewhere; a mother's love dreaming him away from their reality to the promise - beautiful yet flickering - of a river. Haunting, precise and tender, RABBITBOX heralds a major new work from one of Britain's most exciting writers. --`It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.' - JOELLE TAYLOR�