Poetry by Luke Palmer

In the sequence of poems that forms the spine of this debut collection, Luke Palmer casts 16th Century alchemist Paracelsus as an eccentric single father, giving voice to his Homunculus; a preformationist child and the secret to eternal life. By turns playful and profane, the arcane bleeds into the everyday, untethered from history – a walk in the woods is an encounter with an angry god, a potty training accident becomes a metaphysical exploration. Elsewhere, Palmer addresses masculinities from both sides of the ‘father tug’, roving between the concrete and ephemeral, asking questions of language, the wants of an aging body, and what it means to live forever. 

Praise for Homunculus:

A feat of language and love, meticulously woven in its rhythms and yet explosive, uncontrollable. A poetry collection that reminds you of the endless possibilities of words, scooping them up in fistfuls and clashing them together in sparks until something inside the poet (and reader) catches fire.— Caroline Bird, The Air Year 

Using his intricate dexterities of form and ways of pitching ideas at the acutest of angles, Luke Palmer’s Homunculus makes the theories of Fifteenth and Sixteenth-century preformationists germane to the highly complex realities we inherit. This is a fiercely original debut collection that not only reinvents the lyric but proves that the esoteric has feet in the world.— Tim Liardet, Arcimboldo’s Bulldog

In all my books my father dies is a single poem sculpted from 17 donor texts, all published in the Luke’s birth year. It borrows words from the same numbered pages of each book – those which correlate to his date of birth – and places them in their original order. The result is a work of parallel autobiography – a life lived alongside the poet’s life, created at the moment of his creation. 

Praise for In all my books my Father dies

“Palmer sculpts new work out of the delightfully varied source material to create something stark and beautiful, here, shot through with the most unexpected images and juxtapositions. In all my books my father dies is powerfully inventive in a way that feels participatory for the reader – that thrill of discovery, that moment where things click and the process becomes something like divination. This simultaneously lets us into the technique while giving us a remarkably consistent, melancholic and entrancing authorial voice. A must read.” – Luke Kennard

Spring in the Hospital won the 2018 Prole Pamphlet Prize. The poems document a year following a near-fatal car accident involving Luke’s brother in law, exploring grief, trauma and recovery and their impact on Luke’s daughter, who was a year old at the start of the collection. 

Praise for Spring in the Hospital

Each piece drew me in and left me, afterwards, with something – an astounding image, a feeling of shock, a heart-punch, a wondering or questioning. Spring in the Hospital is a profoundly accomplished poetry pamphlet. – Mab Jones (Judge – Prole Pamphlet Contest)

These erudite, immaculately crafted poems yield not a binary digit or a terabyte to sentimentality of any kind. The spirit of Hill presides, but the poems are very much their own: they are razor-sharp and speak with a startling clarity and confidence. Spring in the Hospital is an outstanding debut, and Luke Palmer is one to watch.–Tim Liardet

Available through the publisher’s website here:

Luke Palmer – Homunculus | Broken Sleep Books: Poetry