Not Even This
On sale
6th May 2021
Price: £8.99
‘[A] clever, cosmic, moving and funny parenting physics and poetry adventure . . . It’s wonderful’ Max Porter via Twitter
‘Clear, nimble and dexterous’ Ocean Vuong
‘It’s a magical book. An incantation to be fully present, fully concerned, fully alive’ Luke Kennard
With the birth of his first child, poet Jack Underwood is confronted anew by the panic of living in a time of unparalleled global uncertainty. Even as he holds his baby daughter, the question of how to survive it all seems more fragile and fraught than ever.
Addressing both his daughter and his readers, in Not Even This Underwood takes a nimble journey through various encounters with uncertainty, touching on questions of time, poetry, climate change, physics, economics and the serious business of Being Silly. Gradually, he and his daughter show each other what it takes to get by – how attentiveness and language are tools with which we can discover a realm of shared intimacy, hope and trust.
Part memoir, part poem, part love letter to a daughter and to all new parents, Not Even This is a delightful and delicate book about how to live now – thrilling, terrifying, fundamental.
‘Clear, nimble and dexterous’ Ocean Vuong
‘It’s a magical book. An incantation to be fully present, fully concerned, fully alive’ Luke Kennard
With the birth of his first child, poet Jack Underwood is confronted anew by the panic of living in a time of unparalleled global uncertainty. Even as he holds his baby daughter, the question of how to survive it all seems more fragile and fraught than ever.
Addressing both his daughter and his readers, in Not Even This Underwood takes a nimble journey through various encounters with uncertainty, touching on questions of time, poetry, climate change, physics, economics and the serious business of Being Silly. Gradually, he and his daughter show each other what it takes to get by – how attentiveness and language are tools with which we can discover a realm of shared intimacy, hope and trust.
Part memoir, part poem, part love letter to a daughter and to all new parents, Not Even This is a delightful and delicate book about how to live now – thrilling, terrifying, fundamental.
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Reviews
'Underwood has the playful wisdom of Frank O'Hara, a Keatsian dedication to finding and worshipping joy, and a knack for giving frivolity, play and silliness a degree of serious attention'
Reading Not Even This felt like waking up in a clearer, stranger and more beautiful world, with some new and holistic grasp of theoretical physics, finance and philosophy, poetry and parenthood. Every other page made me cry. Underwood writes with such intellectual generosity and emotional precision, by turns as consoling as a hug and vertiginous as a sudden fall. It's a magical book. An incantation to be fully present, fully concerned, fully alive
A thoughtful essay-memoir on parenthood, in which Underwood recounts how he learned to manage his angst - "to live within the fear" - by embracing uncertainty . . . [Underwood] is a lucid and engaging companion. The voice that comes through in these pages is immensely likable - humble, conscientious and emotionally intelligent
In clear, nimble, and dexterous prose, Underwood launches a capacious quest toward the unknown and maps the limits of knowledge via artmaking's potent yet elusive role in amplifying the unknowable. All this revolves and hovers over the intimate negotiation of perhaps the deepest mystery of all: fatherhood - and with it the precarious wonder, the fraught yet ever-vital annals of parenting and love
Clever, cosmic, moving and funny; parenting, physics and poetry adventure . . . It's wonderful.