Wonder

Synopsis

The Poetry Society 2025 Reading Recommendations

Wonder is the second half of a project Chris Emery began with Modern Fog (2024): two collections written in close succession, tracing a single arc from the Norfolk landscapes of the earlier book towards a wider meditation on awe, memory and the marvellous. Where Modern Fog found its subject in the particulars of place – the Broads, the coast, the ordinary business of living in north Norfolk – Wonder opens that vision outward, asking how we live with history, with absence and with longing, and how we keep returning to the difficult beauty of the world.

Across poems that move between the absurd, the historical, the comic and the fantastical, Emery considers the city, the country and the coast, and the strange, disparate communities bound together – or kept apart – by history and nature. As in his earlier work, the intimate and the fleeting sit alongside the mundane and the dreamlike, each poem rendered in the musical, exacting language readers of Modern Fog will recognise, and that never shies from emotional weight.

Read together, the two collections form a single statement of echoes and interrogations; read alone, each stands as one of Emery's strongest books to date.

Praise for This Book

‘Chris Emery has an enviable gift, to be able to pack a novel’s worth of action into a few lines, and direct our eye to the moment that matters, the image that impresses, the memory that resonates. These are poems full of quiet, well, wonder.’ —Rishi Dastidar

‘“Wonder”: a word that might imply wide, wet eyes and puddle-weak poems, two things any reader familiar with Emery’s work will know not to expect. Indeed, there is none of that in this collection of tight, vivid, musical poems. The word is used in the opener: “darkness close to wonder”, a phrase that could serve equally well as a title for this multifarious volume, in which any and every subject seems ripe for plucking, and there are no low-hanging fruit or simple flavours.’ —Rory Waterman

Reviews of This Book

‘A fine collection. Smaller poems scattered throughout it such as ‘Truer’ and ‘How Small We Were’ reveal a genuine individual tone – mordant, searching, surprising the reader – and a poet capable of creating unpredictable, freshly-coined images that stay with one after the book has been put down. It takes guts to name a poetry collection Wonder, but Emery lives up to it in many of the poems included here.’ —M. C. Caseley, Stride Magazine

‘The collection’s overall strength lies in Emery’s ability to weave together vivid imagery with profound reflections, creating a tapestry of emotions and intellectual engagement. Each passage acts as a mini meditation, prompting us to pause and consider our perceptions and assumptions about the world and life around us.’ —George L Thomas

‘Although coming across as deeply personal, the reader is drawn in to enjoy a sensuous feast of observation and yearning. Allow time to savour, to taste again and uncover further flavours. These poems contain layers and pleasing depth. Nature features but not necessarily as a thing of beauty. Landscapes are bleak where life has featured hardship. There is railing against the inevitable end, alongside acceptance. Love is remembered without being named.’ —Jackie Law, neverimitate

‘As the title of this book of poems suggests, Wonder is about all things in life that inspire awe, admiration and the unexpected. But the most unexpected thing is that the poems are not all sunny views on the beauty of nature but also about regret, the passing of time, history and the lived experience. The scope is vast. … Moody, evocative and emphatic, this is a wonderful collection.’ —A. J. Sefton

‘A thought-provoking, lyrical examination of wonder whose lines will stay with you long after the moment is done.’ —Amanda Loose, North Norfolk Living

‘Wonder is as multifaceted a collection as it is a concept – amusing and baffling; banal and awe-inspiring; shallow as chit-chat and deep as philosophy.’ —Mike Farren, The High Window

‘2025 Reading Recommendations If you've ever wondered about wonder, then Wonder by Chris Emery is a must-read. With a forensic eye and musical sensibility, Emery explores how we live and how we respond to the moments that matter.’ —Tim Relf, The Poetry Society

‘Emery’s powerful voice seeks to engage, not with an urgency but it presses us to look, to hear. Always it seems, transmitting the shared commonality of our lives, sometimes tragic, but often literally, full of wonder.’ —Elaine Randell, Tears in the Fence