Signs Round a Dead Body

Deryn Rees-Jones’s new collection won a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. It explores relationships with men and the wider cultural constructions of masculinity In poems such as Making Out, and From His Coy Mistress, the dilemmas of modern women are confronted with dark humor and sharp technique in a series of blistering narratives, while intensely realized love poems chart the passionate initiation of new relationships. Love, in all its permutations, suffuses the book, and sensuous details abound. Rees-Jones’s first collection, The Memory Tray, was shortlisted for a Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection.