Absence has a weight of its own
Published 30th June 2012
Daniel Sluman’s Absence has a weight of its own is an unflinching study of serious illness, sex, death and decadence. In sometimes brutal and spare cadences, Sluman explores the extremities of human experience in poems that are skilfully, icily primed.
This debut collection is at times provocative and by turns tender and wry. Frailties and vices are held up for inspection in a ruined landscape of disappointing highs, hung-over regrets and head-on collisions, haunted by figures such as Roman, an unrepentant and debauched womaniser. In the aftermath, real love and hope remain stubbornly, emerging into the sunlight of an unexpected new day.
Reviews
Praise for Absence has a weight of its own
"Daniel Sluman has looked mortality square in the eye and given it shape. These poems are crafted with a striking maturity, each with a heartbeat and blood in its veins. If poetry has a purpose, then this is it." – Helen Ivory
"Daniel Sluman’s debut collection crackles with energy; his language is physical, fast-paced, passionate, fearless. A real discovery by Nine Arches Press." – Penelope Shuttle
"These are poems of lived experience: of the battles we engage in when we desperately want to live. And there is a deep sense of congruence between Sluman’s experience and the poetry which arises out of that experience. A congruence which, to me, suggests the poems have been hard-won in the truest sense of the phrase; one which possesses them of a deep integrity." - Amy McCauley,
the terrible
Published 14th November 2015
Daniel Sluman’s bleak brilliance in the terrible is a masterclass in the power of poetry to confront difficult subject matter with accuracy and painstaking openness. These are rigorous and exacting poems, that dare to go to some of the darkest places and speak with stark precision.
These poems may be stripped down, intense and utterly frank, but they are not without deep reserves of sincerity and beauty. Sluman writes of the heady cocktail of being alive, where loss, love, sex, close shaves with mortality and sharp narratives of pain and suffering are examined in concise and humane clarity.
Reviews
- Grant Tabard in The Ofi Press Magazine
- Helen Mort in The Compass Magazine
- Ken Evans in The Manchester Review
Praise for the terrible
"Daniel Sluman’s new collection explores acute and chronic, emotional and physical pain (and, albeit less often, pleasure) with a raw, compelling urgency. At times playful, at times harrowing, the terrible always brims with life." – Carrie Etter
"Vivid and honest poems of intense experience, in which no wound is too deep to be cauterised by language." – Jean Sprackland
"This is a decadent work of painstaking beauty. Its sophisticated chromatic spectrum is fevered with a minimal though striking palette of monochrome and the occasional burst of pure, visceral colour – erotic, it sweeps through all the shades and nuances of Love and a life lived to its blurry reaches like a Lou Reed song and striking and vivid as a Warhol Factory print. Blood sutures stream through every poem and cuts in the flesh of this book ensure that you cannot read it to the end without knowing the sweet release of a hesitant knife edge to the wrist – let the pain entice you – there is absolute suffering and absolute relief within the pages of this book." – Melissa Lee-Houghton
Stairs and Whispers
(co-edited with Sandra Alland and Khairani Barokka)
Published 30th May 2017
Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, edited by Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka and Daniel Sluman, is a ground-breaking anthology examining UK disabled and D/deaf poetics. Packed with fierce poetry, essays, photos and links to accessible online videos and audio recordings, it showcases a diversity of opinions and survival strategies for an ableist world. With contributions that span Vispo to Surrealism, and range from hard-hitting political commentary to intimate lyrical pieces, these poets refuse to perform or inspire according to tired old narratives.
With poetry & prose by:
Aaron Williamson, Abi Palmer, Abigail Penny, Alec Finlay, Alison Smith, Andra Simons, Angela Readman, Bea Webster, Cath Nichols, Catherine Edmunds, Cathy Bryant, Claire Cunningham, Clare Hill, Colin Hambrook, Daniel Sluman, Debjani Chatterjee, Donna Williams, El Clarke, Eleanor Ward, Emily Ingram, Gary Austin Quinn, Georgi Gill, Giles L. Turnbull, Gram Joel Davies, Grant Tarbard, Holly Magill, Isha, Jackie Hagan, Jacqueline Pemberton, Joanne Limburg, Julie McNamara, Karen Hoy, Khairani Barokka, Kitty Coles, Kuli Kohli, Lisa Kelly, Lydia Popowich, Mark Mace Smith, Markie Burnhope, Michelle Green, Miki Byrne, Miss Jacqui, Naomi Woddis, Nuala Watt, Rachael Boast, Raisa Kabir, Raymond Antrobus, Rosamund McCullain, Rose Cook, Sandra Alland, Saradha Soobrayen, Sarah Golightley, sean burn, Stephanie Conn
Reviews
Praise for Stairs and Whispers
“This is a collection which redefines what poetry is. This is a collection which is nearly as varied as the diversity of impairment and disability and D/deaf experiences in Britain today. This is a collection which I will read and re-read until I have absorbed the richness and colour and anger and misery and humour and power of it.” – Tom Shakespeare, author, Disability Rights and Wrongs
“The face of next-generation disability poetics announces itself with a roar – razor-fine lyric, body knowledge, crip humour and revolutionary grief are all on display, along with something more: the joy of the discovered self. The poems here are gorgeous and important.” – Sheila Black, co-editor, Beauty is a Verb
“Stairs and Whispers is an incredible addition to crip literature that I’m excited to add to my shelf! The poems and essays featured here are at once devastating, enraging, and uproarious for me as a queer neurodivergentwriter of colour.” – Lydia X. Z. Brown, activist, writer and speaker