The One Girl Gremlin

Her first pamphlet since her debut full collection Platinum Blonde sees Phoebe Stuckes'' trademark poems of high humour and hubris take on a dreamier, more abstract, quality. Perhaps the ''wise-cracking party girl'' of her earlier work is sensing that, for a while at least, the party is postponed. There isn''t much worth staying up late for any more in these poems. Instead, our character lies awake in bed long into the night or wakes up into a pre-dawn world they barely recognise. And the strange new rural setting they wake to is inviting and also threatening and therefore not to be trusted. Phoebe Stuckes remains one of the most exciting horrifying hilarious unsettling poets writing today. The One Girl Gremlin is of course an absolute triumph.