Panic Response

By John McCullough

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST SINGLE POEM*
From the mercurial mind of award-winning poet John McCullough comes his darkest and most experimental book to date. Panic Response puts personal and cultural anxiety under the microscope. It is full of things that shimmer, quiver and fizz: plankton glowing at low tide; brain tissue turning to glass; a basketball emerging from the waves, covered in barnacles. These are poems of uncertainty but also of hope, which move beyond the breathlessness of panic towards luminescence and solidarity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penned in the Margins
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913850098

John McCullough

John McCullough's first collection of poems, The Frost Fairs, won the Polari First Book Prize and was a Book of the Year for The Independent. His second, Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins, 2016), was named one of The Guardian's Best Books for Summer and shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize. His latest collection, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019) was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.

Book preview

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PANIC RESPONSE

John McCullough lives in Hove. His third book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds (2019), won the Hawthornden Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. His previous collections have been Books of the Year for The Guardian and The Independent. He teaches creative writing at the University of Brighton and for organisations including the Arvon Foundation.

ALSO BY JOHN MCCULLOUGH

POETRY

Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019)

Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins, 2016)

The Frost Fairs (Salt Publishing, 2011)

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PUBLISHED BY PENNED IN THE MARGINS

Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London E1 6AB

www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk

All rights reserved

© John McCullough 2022

The right of John McCullough to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Penned in the Margins.

First published 2022

ePub ISBN

978-1-913850-09-8

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

Glass Men

J

Electric Blue

Quantum

Candyman

Letter to Lee Harwood

Prayer for a Godless City

Pour

Mantle

A Chronicle of English Panic

,

And Leave to Dry

Scoundrel

Error Garden

Invisible Repairs

Flower of Sulphur

Coombeland Mannequin

Worms

Scrambled Eggs

Oops, I Did It Again

Self-Portrait as a Flashing Neon Sign

&

Inside Edward Carpenter

Old Ocean’s Bauble

Bungaroosh

Six!

Mr Jelly

Crown Shyness

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NOTES

for Morgan and my parents

Panic Response

Glass Men

Brain tissue inside a man’s skull at Pompeii had turned to glass through heat.

When my head is molten, I hide with ice packs near