Peacocks Can't Swim is Matt Abbott's account of being signed to a major label straight out of sixth form, and of the long aftermath that followed. A pub monologue in broad West Yorkshire dialect frames the book, but its central sequence moves into a second person that holds the teenage subject at a wary distance while stylists, A&Rs, and handlers coach him towards a more saleable, less likeable self. Abbott is exact about the drinking, the panic attacks, and the class humiliation, and no less exact when the collection turns towards marriage, fatherhood, and the difficulty of grieving publicly for Gaza. Peacocks Can't Swim is poetry about learning to live with and without the spotlight.