Eidolon by Sandeep Parmar Michael Murphy Memorial Prize Susan Utting’s poems are proud

Susan Utting’s poems are proud lovers of sound

as inspiration and as a moral and political handbook

Over the course of the collection

thrilling point of vibration

often stripped down to single-word lines

Eidolon by Sandeep Parmar Michael Murphy Memorial Prize Susan Utting’s poems are proudWINNER of the Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection, 2017. Partly a modern revision of the Helen myth, Eidolon meditates on the visible and invisible forces of Western civilisation from classical antiquity to present day America. An Eidolon is an image, a ghost, a spectre, a scapegoat. It is a device, like deus ex machina, to deal with the problem of narrative, specifically Helens supposed deceit and infidelity. The Eidolon, as a device, is