The Whole Island

Available now for early-release pre-orders.

The Whole Island explores the poet's relationship with the Isle of Man, in poems which touch on family and folklore, history and politics, nature and wildlife, as well as their tangled connections. Through lines that charm and blaze, Simon Maddrell considers what it means to be endemic: the island navigated as a body, the body as an island. Here, the poet calls upon his cherished isle as an allegory for the nature of his own queerness, the queerness of nature, and the threat of extinction more broadly: linguistic, cultural, physical, environmental.