Description

‘Powerful… Intense and unforgettable’ MAX PORTER
‘I’m blown away… An astonishing work’ AMY KEY
‘Amazing… Truly a feat’ RAYMOND ANTROBUS

‘Devastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles’ Guardian

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A transfixing, heart-rending work which follows a mother and her young son living under the shadow of an all-consuming domestic threat, by T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Wayne Holloway-Smith.

24 Coalbrook Street. The house is trembling with a father’s anger. It makes a rabbit of a young boy, sends him burrowing into a wardrobe, and leaves his mother standing hapless and mute over the kitchen sink. In this house, how far can a mother’s comfort travel?

From the safety of his hiding place, from the magnitude of his fear, a young girl appears offering a way out. Taking him by the hand, reaching through time, she leads him elsewhere; a mother’s love dreaming him away from their reality to the promise – beautiful yet flickering – of a river.

Haunting, precise and tender, RABBITBOX heralds a major new work from one of Britain’s most exciting writers.

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‘It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape… RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.’ – JOELLE TAYLOR

Publisher Review

'It's a powerful piece. Properly tunnelled into me in an intense and unforgettable way... The emphasis on love, and the way Wayne combines a symbolic iconography with real world stuff is very strong.' Max Porter 'I'm blown away. I don't read Wayne Holloway-Smith's poetry, I become immersed in its curious, skin-scraping world. In RABBITBOX he creates an atmosphere of eerie vulnerability, a 'terrible hosanna of language' that compels as powerfully as it unsettles. I felt the fraught mission of creating safety in a domesticity that could not guarantee it; of the magic tricks a mind must conjure when it lives alongside punishing, pathetic masculinity. An astonishing work.' Amy Key 'This book is amazing. Imagine a poetry version of DH Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers blended with Han Kan's novella, The White Book. That could be said of Wayne Holloway-Smith's latest offering, RABBITBOX. Holloway-Smith is more than a talented poet, he's a gifted phrase-maker. RABBITBOX is a lyrically ambitious and powerfully evocative book on trauma and family. Truly a feat.' Raymond Antrobus 'It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.' - Joelle Taylor 'Devastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles' Guardian