PILGRIM BELL : SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 FORWARD PRIZE – KAVEH AKBAR

*AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021* **Selected as one of TIME s 100 Must-Read Books of 2021** Profound and singular, smart and sad and funny. . . We need Pilgrim Bell. TOMMY ORANGE With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar s second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body s question, what now shall I repair? Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance – the infinite void of a loved one s absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation – teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness. Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell s linguistic rigour is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives – resonant, revelatory, and holy. America, I warn you, if you invite me into your home I will linger, kissing my beloveds frankly, pulling up radishes and capping all your pens. There are no good kings, only burning palaces. -from The Palace Very few living writers write so achingly toward God as Kaveh Akbar . . . each of the poems in this collection finds its target LAUREN GROFF