Implacable Art

Synopsis

In this landmark first full-length collection, Anna Mendelssohn emerges as one of the most singular and formidable voices of the late twentieth-century avant-garde. ‘Implacable Art’ is a work of restless transformation, where the poetic page becomes a site of intense resistance against the narrowing effects of modern power and state surveillance.

The collection continues Mendelssohn’s career-long exploration of persecution, loss, and the precarity of the individual. Her lyricism is both fiercely guarded and radically open, weaving esoteric wordplay and high-stakes linguistic play into a ‘fugitive’ poetics that refuses to be categorized. By treating words as magical objects capable of re-enchanting a world shaped by alienation, Mendelssohn challenges the reader to look beyond official language and accepted histories.

Moving between ‘explosive’ political confrontation and the quiet, minor confusions of daily life, Implacable Art offers an ecstatic and at times painful vision of our shared dependencies and desires. It is a work of profound imaginative inventiveness – a testament to the necessity of art as a means of survival and a howl of defiance that remains as vital and audacious today as when it was first published.

Reviews of This Book

‘[Mendelssohn is] increasingly recognised as one of the most important avant-garde poets of her generation.’ —Eleanor Careless and Vicky Sparrow, Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry

‘Mendelssohn’s poetry is a marvel of high-stakes linguistic play and fierce, fugitive integrity.’ —The Times Literary Supplement, David Wheatley

‘Mendelssohn’s poetry is both empathic and uncompromising. Politically charged, explosive moments are patterned within shifting images that register a profoundly sensitive lyric subjecthood.’ —Culture Matters, Vicky Sparrow

‘Mendelssohn’s anonymous honesty calls for more poetry, more writing, more art, implacable.’ —Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, Luke Roberts

‘Mendelssohn’s poems are at once radically open and fiercely guarded; they possess a lyric intelligence that is as sharp as a diamond and just as difficult to shatter.’ —New Left Review, Jack Barron