Released 30th December, 2023 // 70 pages // 978-1-915760-53-1 // RRP £9.99
jade king's poems remind us that there’s magic in the mess and that even within the shadows of pain and despair, there’s a world waiting to be birthed into being. A work of immense bravery and skill, this is a collection of deep vulnerability, and as such, a dazzling act of unapologetic resilience. Sucker Punch is a debut as thrilling and powerful as its title, a necessary and profoundly beautiful meditation on survival, strength and perseverance.
PRAISE for Sucker Punch:
Sucker Punch is a stunning debut. Why? Because it’s increasingly rare to read a new voice that comes at you fully formed and swinging. Make no mistake, jade king is the real deal–– a poet’s poet who mines trauma with surgical precision, no matter the cost. king’s poetics of defiance simply refuses to be ignored and will leave you badly bruised and begging for more.
— Daniele Pantano, Home for Difficult Children
‘I am here // to retrieve mine’ demands the speaker in ‘We Will Find Her,’ a poem which rouses us to Sucker Punch’s central focus: the poet’s refusal of a small footprint as she reemerges in the wake of all that’s rendered her defenseless: the wounds of childhood, girlhood, womanhood; the precarity of a body; the fatigue of awareness and self-talk. Across these pages, witness a poet fully engaged with the complexities of her own interior, wrestling in her fragile possession with every detail of a life never fully accessible by the heart of another: unaware / you are entering // a series of masks. // Paperchain of womanhood, girl / for each day of the week.’ How to bridge that distance? How to wait for someone to iron the phone line,’ to ‘place your ear to a seashell // & not hear the barrel of a gun’? Encounter the poet clean herself of damage as well, each word a clenched fist, a self-affirming counterblow with no warning: ‘when I die I would like to be // buried. I would like to take up space.’ Let these poems take up space in your mind and your gut. jade king’s Sucker Punch is nothing short of an astonishing debut.
— Susan L. Leary, Dressing the Bear
ABOUT jade king:
jade king is a dyslexic poet from the UK. She is often told she “looks like a dog person.” Her work has been published or is forthcoming in 3:AM Magazine, Schlag Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Star 82 Review, and The Abandoned Playground.
