Martin Hayes has managed with Ox to create a new allegory that says a lot about our work lives that stays true to the tradition of poets and writers who under totalitarian regimes have had to create allegories to escape detection by control-freak authorities. It requires real ingenuity and perseverance to create a new vehicle for your voice and still be able to stay incisive and funny.

• Fred Voss

1984 for 2021: the fabulous Ox’s allegorical self-song sings to us of our own diminution; our sad expediency; our compromise and cowardice; of how we’ve allowed ourselves to become bystanders to our own enslavement. Martin Hayes gives us back the truest measure of England’s new identity. We should take note and be grateful.

• Martin Malone

‘We need poets like Hayes now more than ever … Important reading.’

• Andrew McMillan, Poetry Review

‘Hayes is unique among British poets … thoroughly subversive … funny, shocking, fascinating, humanising.’

• Mistress Quickly’s Bed

‘This is poetry like virtually no-one else in Britain is writing. It is funny, wise, sad, tragic and thoroughly memorable.’

• Alan Dent