Description
Book SynopsisPure Hustle is concerned with imagination – as a means of escape and of illumination, as destructive and redemptive. Its finely honed urban landscapes are shot through with myth, storytelling and the lure of transformation. Kate Potts’ poems are tightly wrought, multi-layered webs built out of sound, rhythm and wordplay that invite re-reading. With a startling and idiosyncratic eye, often photographic or cinematic, she examines the shifting, fractured nature of memory and the strangenesses of love. Her choice of material and inspiration is enthusiastically wide ranging, incorporating everything from news reports to advertising text to song lyrics, from cross-continental bus trips to the daily commute, from the grand passions and chronic uncertainties of a world in flux to the trials of a day at the office.
Trade ReviewPure Hustle is a gem of book in which Kate Potts conjures a poetry which astonishes and moves the reader. The texture of her language - its deft and surprising turns, its intense musicality - allows the many voices in these poems to soar. Her curiosity and profound intelligence means that the poems range wonderfully far and wide in setting and subject-matter from the urban clutter of contemporary settings, to modern variations on pastoral, to Penelope weaving, to a beached whale, and more. Kate Potts is a poet whose ear and eye for her work are as close to perfect as can be: Pure Hustle is pure gold. -- Jo Shapcott
