The Never-Never

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize
Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection

Reviews

Kathryn Gray’s poetry is delightfully accessible, intelligent, full of deftly rendered detail and attractive cadences. Somehow or other – through sheer talent and instinct, I would say – she has established a convincing and utterly contemporary balance of fragility and assurance.’ – Douglas Dunn

‘Gray has an intense sense of the deconsecrated which together with the equestrienne snap and snuffle of her poems make this an original and thoroughly twenty-first century debut.’ – Maurice Riordan

‘A winner.’ – Peter Finch

‘A spirited performance…mysterious…chilling’ – Alan Brownjohn, The Sunday Times

‘[The] hallmarks of Gray’s style are there: the eye for detail, the panache…These poems swarm with (often dazzling) effect…this is attention-grabbing stuff.’ – Poetry Wales

‘Throughout The Never-Never, Gray conjures a Gothic British neverland of pubs, estates, rainy streets, bedrooms, garages, cafes, and chapels. These are not empty spaces, however, but places where human beings rub along one another, creating frictions or attractions… The Never-Never breathes life and warmth into British stereotypes all too easily used in the media. Gray’s collection successfully manages to relate personal stories full of the folly and laughter of human pride and endeavour, whilst also conjuring a sense of place and community that is complex, vivid and beautiful.’  – Zoë Brigley, Agenda

‘Kathryn Gray’s The Never-Never manifests an intelligence and an outward interest especially refreshing in a first collection…poems employ dense yet sinuous lines in such a way as to render a moment lush in its emotional fullness…an intelligent emotional complexity. The Never-Never brings together an array of accomplished poems, remarkable in their singularity of style and interest and that is to be applauded.’ – Carrie Etter, New Welsh Review

‘She finds beautiful imagery in surprisingly familiar places…a taut, chilling narrative…shows up Gray’s talent for giving a rare poetic voice to twentysomething anxieties.’ – Clare Pollard, Magma

‘Formal relish and exuberance…’ – Poetry Review

‘Kathryn Gray clearly has talent and in this, her first collection, she puts it on display in poems which are, by turns, clever, witty and formally accomplished. ‘The Collect’ – the Never-Never of the collection – construes a land of childhood that has to be paid for, though ‘when they’d come/we, all grown up now, would never be home’. Kathryn Gray, in contrast, does pay up, with interest.’ – Greg Hill, Planet