Glimmer

Shazea Quraishi is a Pakistani-born Canadian poet, playwright and translator based in London. A selection of her work was included in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten: new poets from Spread the Word in 2010 and her first pamphlet, The Courtesans Reply, was published by flipped eye in 2012. The Art of Scratching, her first book-length collection, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. Her second, The Glimmer, is due from Bloodaxe in 2022. She received a Brooklease Grant from the Royal Society of Literature in 2015 and an award from the Artists International Development Fund of the British Council and Arts Council England in the same year.

• The Glimmer 7Elegy 93How it begins 97Notes & acknowledgements 101

Constraint, precision and technical mastery characterise this compelling and generous narrative of collective artistic endeavour. If the ‘form is the measure of the obsession’ then this collection is a lifelong obsession with the truth-telling nature of art.