Man or woman; some people just don't feel like getting married by that mile marker, especially if they don't desire children- or children they'll create as opposed to adopting. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection.

It’s just me and him’) is relentless, idiotic and incredibly destructive; the response she hates herself for - ‘ Milk, no sugar, I say with a smile’ - is a convenient way out of awkwardness. A few felt repetitive towards the end but there were a lot I found thoughtfully composed and powerfully delivered. If inheritance and the social structure are to blame for burgeoning abuse – the easy insults continue into the classroom in this alarming poem – then ingrained ignorance is an immovable object untroubled by notions of personal responsibility. You can delay marriage and many people do these days, but you run the risk of never getting hitched. These deeply empathetic and unforgettable poems go everywhere, see everything and one feels, again and again in this collection, that a poet of the greatest gifts is addressing the most important of subjects, for all of us.

Both forms of resistance stem from a solitary urge, and both relent on grounds of misplaced social etiquette, if in entirely different contexts. You can hear Kim chatting in-depth about the book on the The Seren Poetry Podcast which is available now on all podcast platforms. Her disparate use of form stresses mending at point of fracture, of bones knitting but leaving surrounding scar tissue.

And although I liked the collection, I must admit a lot of the poems did not really get to me, and I found it difficult to connect at times. Young adults are taking more time to marry; the median age for first-time marriages is 28 for women and 30 for men. Unless you are the founder of some major company like Facebook, Google, or Quora you really have no right to criticize anyone else. We are tired of being threatened and hurt, tired of being talked at, tired of being told what we ought to mean; these sublime poems say it all, and it feels like rain after drought, a beautiful release. I don't totally agree with certain gender roles but of course I don't swing towards the house husband idea.However, I felt as though some ideas weren't fleshed out and space was instead taken up by somewhat repetitive topics. I didn't even begin thinking about wanting a serious relationship until I was 35 but boy oh boy was I in for a surprise. The truth is, I knew who would be best for me and as much as I wanted to marry, I wasn't willing to risk a bad marriage by compromising on essentials.