Oils

Stephen Sexton's pamphlet, Oils (Emma Press, 2014), was the Poetry Book Society's Winter Pamphlet Choice, and his first collection, If All the World and Love Were Young (Penguin, 2019), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He was the winner of the 2016 National Poetry Competition, the recipient of an ACES award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and was awarded an Eric Gregory Award in 2018.

Such is the scope of the poems included – from the haunting 'The Death of Horses', to the more satirical 'Credit History', and the innocence of 'Subimago' – that Oils quickly hooks you with its ambition. It brings wit, melancholy and irony to the table, blurring the lines of what we think and know and dream to great effect.-Clare Savage, Culture Northern Ireland