All That Lives

‘The poems are extraordinary. Desire and dementia, the death of the brain and the life of the body jostle in All That Lives. These poems provoke thought, shock with sadness, and revive. They are alive.’ Alison Brackenbury. Poems of sex, death and pathology, both funny and moving, tackle taboo subjects with cutting-edge science and rich sensuality. All That Lives arises largely from residencies in pathology and neuroscience research institutes. We trace Laws’ personal journey from witnessing deaths of loved ones through her quest to understand the science of dying down to brain cell level, encountering strange specimens and conditions. Concurrently, her rediscovery of modern sex and dating brings hilarious, earthy life to an unflinching collection, her tenth book, which has won many prizes and distinctions including a Wellcome Trust Arts Award. ‘ ...its ambitious lyric originality and the richness of its word-hoard as it gives a voice to foetal specimens in their cold jars. ...’ Carol Ann Duffy, Mslexia, on Litter of Moons ‘Remarkable poems. Valerie Laws uses words and powerful imagery as surgeons and pathologists wield their scalpels – she dissects our relationships with the living, the demented and the dead with compassion, neuroanatomical detail, explicit eroticism and black humour.’ Susan Standring, editor of Gray’s Anatomy & Professor of Anatomy, Kings College London. ‘A poet brings a new vocabulary to pathological realities’ Graham P Mulley, British Medical Journal