Art of Escape

A Telegraph Poetry Book of the Month (January 2020) Among Mina Gorji's poems in New Poetries V (2011) was one about Houdini entitled 'The Art of Escape' which returns here as the title poem. This colourful and vivid first collection continues the course of Mina Gorji's meticulous explorations of 'the strange and sometimes darker side of nature' and the different forms and meanings of escape: dandelions crossing the ocean, the journey of a gall wasp from Aleppo to England, the transformation of an armadillo into music. These poems shift by degrees until new patterns and sounds emerge, transforming the familiar into unexpected configurations. Art of Escape is a wonderful casting off into the complex waters of adult life, in which change has become the constant.

Mina Gorji was born in Tehran and grew up in London. She lives in Cambridge where she is a lecturer in the English Faculty, Cambridge and a fellow of Pembroke College. Her published work includes a study of John Clare and essays on awkwardness, mess, weeds and rudeness. Her poems have appeared, among other places, in Magma, PN Review, London Magazine, The International Literary Quarterly and New Poetries V.