by Blake Morrison (Author)
Here you are, on the balcony,
the sea serenading you,
the sun with its armful of light.
In Afterburn, his first collection since Shingle Street (2015), the renowned life writer Blake Morrison returns to poetry, his first calling, to offers scenes from his own life and the lives of others. In psychology, 'afterburn' refers to the period of time before a past event is assimilated: an idea that resonates through these poems - which themselves linger after reading - about memories and our human attempts to articulate, shape or contain them.
Revisiting past and alternate selves, the poet dives back into the unassuming stream of our dailiness, to see with new eyes the turning points in a lifetime's accidental course. What holds these wise, touching, joyful poems together are the small intimacies that bind us to others, under time's lengthening shadow: 'you moved too fast for me to catch you / and so did the years.'
Playful, charming, sometimes rakishly so, Afterburn nevertheless reveals an open, and vulnerable, heart.
Author Biography
Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (winner of the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and the Esquire Award for Non-Fiction) and Things My Mother Never Told Me. His poetry collections include Dark Glasses, which won the Dylan Thomas and Somerset Maugham prizes, Pendle Witches, which was illustrated by Paula Rego, and Shingle Street. He is also a novelist, critic, journalist and librettist. He lives in South London.
Number of Pages: 80
Publication Date: February 24, 2026
