Sylvanian Family

Reading Summer Young is like folding yourself into a deceptively miniature world, a cat's eye view of a dystopian Wonderland. Here, shoe prints are rabbit snares, a mother is a mountain, the trellis-like family home encompasses a complex ecosystem of cockroaches and fireflies, mice and sea urchins. In this arresting debut, Young invokes the visceral candor of Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas, and confronts trauma with a fierce and virtuosic wit.

Like any good daughter I tie the bedsheets

into a rope for my father

to escape the house he set alight

"Sylvanian Family is one of the most remarkable and stunning debut poetry pamphlets I have read in a long time. A haunted dollhouse of beautifully crafted humour and pain. I found such inspiration from these strange, alarming poems. Summer Young has captured something powerful here, a bizarre examination of love and what it means to suffer each other. I can't stop thinking about it." Bobby Parker

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