Double Takes

Twinning is well embedded in Lawrence Sail’s family: himself the son of a twin, he also has a twin sister and – youngest of his four children – twin daughters. His book's title Double Takes reflects the poems’ central concern with many aspects of duality – whether manifested in the context of human relations, translations, ‘the moment saved from time’ or the touchstone of mortality. In some instances, juxtapositions and counterpoints bring affinities to light; in others, distance and difference. A number of the poems address the political and the public: the plight of refugees, a photo of Putin beside Gorbachev’s coffin, Brecht’s take on the ways of the world. Others confront the hard consequences of illness. Most of all, these are poems that pay proper attention to their subjects, and which amount to an appreciation of beauty and balance, however precarious, as in ‘Moving Out’, where it is only being ‘on the brink of removal’ that makes it possible to ‘engage with the ins and outs’, and to benefit from ‘the startle of those double takes / which reinterpret truth’. Lawrence Sail's retrospective, Waking Dreams: New & Selected Poems, a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, was published by Bloodaxe in 2010, and followed by his later collections The Quick (2015), Guises (2020), and now, Double Takes (2026).