The Facebook of the Dead - Softcover

Valerie Laws' thirteenth book combines poems of pathology and loss, speed-dating tortoises, baking scones for Eminem, haiku sprayed on beachballs, and passionate polemic in more of her signature compassion, neuroanatomical detail, explicit eroticism and black humour (SUSAN STANDRING, editor of Gray's Anatomy). Many prize-winning and commissioned poems are included, some having featured in major exhibitions, anthologies, stage productions or on BBC TV. Laws images are vivid and the language rattles and sparks...she chooses her subjects carefully, seeking the intense and the pregnant within them and offering the reader something of the real experience they contain. NIGEL MCLOUGHLIN, Poetry Review Brilliant. ...I came as a skeptic and left oddly impressed...rather wonderful combination of words GRIFF RHYS JONES, BBC2, Why Poetry Matters, Water's Bright Words beachball haiku. Laws sonnet beautifully evokes both a passion for the countryside and her horror at its destruction LETTIE MCKIE, Sabotage Reviews, Chainsaw Massacre Praise for Valerie Laws poetry: These poems provoke thought, shock with sadness, and revive. ALISON BRACKENBURY ...ambitious lyric originality and the richness of its word-hoar CAROL ANN DUFFY, on A Litter of Moons , Mslexia A poet brings a new vocabulary to pathological realities GRAHAM P MULLEY, British Medical Journal Almost unbearably moving STEVEN and HILARY ROSE, The Lancet Laws manages to be heartfelt without seeming overly sentimental, and is witty without being irreverent. The Economist