Hide Me Under the Blood and I Shall Be Satisfied

A Poetry Book Society RecommendationKeith Jarrett's dazzlingly lyrical new collection asks how we process violence when it's lionised in our language, on city street signs, in the edicts of a vengeful god. Its title borrowed from an unknown songwriter, this book is a palimpsest, layering known and unknown verses: those sung in Pentecostal churches or whispered in silent worship, texted to a 3am suitor or redacted from a eulogy. These poems are requiem and carnival: for the dead, the buried, the erased, the forgotten. They are magnetic, musical, scorched in glitter, skanking on the offbeat. With courage, insight and mischief, Jarrett invites the reader to look sideways, to consider the absurd, messy and problematic with a playfulness that feels, in itself, slyly revolutionary. “A virtuosic collection in which Jarrett tests and revivifies language, willing to bend and even break it in search of something new.” Victoria Adukwei Bulley“There is an erotics, a rage, a prayer, a love, a figuring-out, a making-up, a throw-down, a challenge, a confession and a summons. Delicious.” Pádraig Ó Tuama“Keith Jarrett is one of London’s most radiantly living bards, the embodied poet as storyteller, historian and one-man archive. In Hide Me Under the Blood and I Shall Be Satisfied, Jarrett channels a voice and a chant of “the undocumented history of this Empire” where spirits, saints and literary ancestors are summoned to carnivals and holy communions. There is much defiance, queering and inquiry in these poems, a “reckoning with sorrow” as only a poet can put it. As well as formal inventiveness, there is playful bilingual lyricism and humour. I love this poet. He is important. To know why, you must hear his hymns.” Raymond Antrobus