Cheryl’s Destinies
Cheryl’s Destinies by Stephen Sexton, published by Penguin Books in 2021, is a collection of 91 pages written in English. This book presents a series of inventive and dream-like poems that explore the interplay between history, memory, and imagination. Through the character of Cheryl, the poems navigate various settings, from a liberated zoo to a bowling alley, while reflecting on both public and private tragedies.
Readers will find a journey that traverses old Europe and contemporary themes, divided into three distinct parts. The poems engage with significant events and figures, culminating in a reflection on how the past continuously influences the present. Cheryl’s tarot cards serve as a metaphorical device, offering insight into the complexities of existence across time. This collection invites readers to consider the comfort found in the fantastical amidst the challenges of reality.
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Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
A Financial Times, Irish Times and Telegraph Book of the Year
history is what we call / what might have happened differently / and didn’t
It is the decade of centuries, and Cheryl tells us our fortune. Radicals liberate a zoo, teenagers flirt in a bowling alley, and the dead are cherished. In these inventive, playful, dream-like poems, Stephen Sexton takes us on a journey through the past and the present, while Cheryl translates from the future, showing us how we exist in all three at once.
Reckoning with both public and private tragedies, the book is divided into three parts. In Part One, the poems range across old Europe: ‘Edelweiss’ and Titanic setting sail, to a transatlantic, cross-century symposium in Part Two, where two giants perfect their arts in collaboration. In Part Three we are back in the land where the past keeps breaking through, it’s practically always the anniversary of something terrible, but there’s always Cheryl in the moonlight and her deck of tarot cards.
A thrillingly strange exploration of the comfort of the fantastical when the real is hard to bear, Cheryl’s Destinies is the enchanting follow-up to the Forward Prize for Best First Collection-winning If All the World and Love Were Young, by one of the most exciting young poets writing today.
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