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Unsafe

A Poetry Book Society Choice
By Karen McCarthy Woolf
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Brief Description
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE The third collection from T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf 'A work of intense epiphany' ROGER ROBINSON Unsafe will stay with me forever' SAFIA ELHILLO 'As urgent as it is meditative and thought provoking' PRETI TANEJA A... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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The third collection from firebrand poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf whose volumes Bittersweet and Kin introduced a generation of readers to Black British Poets in the Nineties

The third collection from firebrand poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf whose volumes Bittersweet and Kin introduced a generation of readers to Black British Poets in the Nineties

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE

The third collection from T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf

'A work of intense epiphany' ROGER ROBINSON
Unsafe will stay with me forever' SAFIA ELHILLO
'As urgent as it is meditative and thought provoking' PRETI TANEJA

A disenchanted walk through the afterlives of colonialism across London and LA, Unsafe illuminates the effects of capitalism on those who live at its sharp end.

Situated in the midst of a reckoning with a politics of enclosure, Unsafe is an immersive meditation on place, the body, nature and the self. Whether it’s via tattoos, trees or the totemic quality of cats, McCarthy Woolf pulls us into the processes of gentrification and class division with an immediacy that makes them impossible to ignore.

A moving, critical and highly intuitive epic weaving together poetry, documentary and lyric essay, Unsafe is an interrogation of what it means to be a citizen and testimony to the remaining spaces we can call free.

'One of the most intellectually daring writers of our generation' MONA ARSHI
'McCarthy Woolf possesses a rare, uncanny power' KIT FAN

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781526666994

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 12 February 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Bloomsbury Poetry

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 18.0mm

Width: 126.0mm

Height: 196.0mm

Weight: 141g

Pages: 144

Collections

Arts & Culture Karen McCarthy Woolf Non-Fiction Poetry Science & Nature

About the Author

Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL is a poet, editor, essayist and librettist. Her novel in verse, Top Doll, was a Guardian Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. As a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at UCLA she was the inaugural poet in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights. In 2025, she won a Society of Authors Cholmondeley Award and the Jerwood Prize for Poetry (England).

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