Decade by Anna Jordan is a fierce, intimate debut that refuses the neat arcs of recovery and instead writes grief as lived time, full of bodily recoil, dark humour, and sudden tenderness. These poems move through miscarriage and maternal loss, depression, separation, and the daily negotiations of parenthood, set against recognisable rooms and public spaces, from a Premier Inn in Clacton to the kitchen where love, addiction, and survival are repeatedly remade. Jordan’s style is direct and theatrically alert, capable of lyric lift and brutal undercut, and her best poems hold despair and comedy in the same breath, letting the sacred and the profane share a line without softening either. What emerges is a book of unsentimental devotion, where language becomes both witness and coping mechanism, and where the ordinary is charged with the full voltage of grief.
 
PRAISE for Anna Jordan:
 
Generous, visceral and darkly comic. I love Anna’s huge-hearted writing.
— Sara Pascoe
 
These poems of love, of loss, and of longing are at once extraordinarily moving and exhilarating. There is an energy in the language and a richness of feeling that consistently move you forward and lead you inexorably from poem to poem. It’s called Decade for a reason but this collection seems to encompass lifetimes. I found it totally compelling.
— Timberlake Wertenbaker
 
Do not purchase this collection unless you wish to be exposed to raw, visceral emotion. The poet confronts profound tragedy with courage without sinking into a morass of self-pity through under-cutting her narratives with sudden and unexpected imagery and wry observations. 
As the title suggests, disturbance/turmoil/loss/grief permeate the poems which are expressed in simple everyday language within everyday settings to which the reader can immediately relate.
However, such is the skill of Jordan that somehow the Premier Inn, Clacton becomes as important as any existentialist’s couch and your yoghurts in the fridge assume an almost metaphysical cry of anguish. 
Sentimentality could so easily overwhelm the poems, perhaps especially in Big News which relates childhood incidents in the life of her son. Indeed, she takes us to the brink of the abyss with the ultra-sweet,  As you touch my face for the 98th time that bedtime but immediately subverts with ….remember that/ I must cut your fucking nails. 
Similarly, her relationship with a much-loved mother is chronicled from their dancing, melded to each other, to the discovery of bottles hidden in oven, loo, piano —but the love is unshakable and so is Jordan’s poetry.   
Do not purchase this collection if you are unable to empathise with:
Grief is registering death with a one-fingered typist
— Ruth O’Callaghan
 
I loved reading these poems. They are poems of life, unflinching, courageous, funny and true.
— Moira Buffini
 
The dynamic range of Jordan’s writing is extraordinary.
— The Guardian.
 
ABOUT Anna Jordan:
Anna Jordan is a writer and director from London. As a playwright she has had plays performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Court and the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and as a screenwriter she has worked on many shows including HBO’s Succession and Netflix’s One Day. She runs the Support Playwrights Substack and is passionate about creating community in her industry. She’s been writing poetry for a while, but this is her first collection. She is enjoying being a rookie poet instead of a jaded playwright.