Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2018
Shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize 2019
'Of the 100 or so poetry books I have reviewed for this paper since 2017, there's none I've returned to more often, or with more pleasure, than Abigail Parry's Jinx.' - Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph
Jinx: a ruinous charm, a quickdraw curse, a knight's move.
Abigail Parry's first collection is concerned with spells, and ersatz spells: with semblance and sleight-of-hand. It takes its formal cues from moth-camouflage and stage magic, from the mirror-maze and the masquerade, and from high-stakes games of poker.
Jinx asks about the equivocal nature of artifice, and the real mischief that underwrites the trick. The poems deal in forms of influence: in seduction and persuasion, infatuation and obsession. They want to talk about what we submit to, and what we are compelled by.
'These are outstanding poems: constructed like a collection of beautifully made, trick, locked boxes, they are innovative, complex, and lush in their language and texture. In an explosion of gaming we find in the poems etymological digging, rare words, number games, anagrams, hidden shapes - as well as a range of experiments in traditional and contemporary form. This is poetry con brio, ambitious, far-reaching, but using disguise to tell hidden stories of emotion and pain.' - Jo Shapcott
'Abigail Parry, in her first collection, Jinx, performs twists and turns on playground games, ghost lore, cantrips and myths; the poems strike deep on matters of love and pleasure, sex and risk, as well as dazzle with their antic wit and control.' - Marina Warner, New Statesman (Books of the Year 2019)
'Monsters, masquerades and B-movie stars are all serenaded in infectious rhythm and rhyme in the year's most exciting poetry debut.' - The Telegraph (2018's Top 50 Books)
'Abigail Parry's seductive Jinx deserves every horror award going. Monsters, masquerades and B-movie stars are all serenaded in infectious rhythm and rhyme. It's the most exciting debut of the year, only matched for delirious energy by Kaveh Akbar's Calling a Wolf a Wolf...' - Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph (Poetry Books of the Year 2018)
'Abigail Parry's Jinx is pure magic - dangerous, soulful and splendidly virtuosic.' - Kate Wakeling, Morning Star (Poetry Books of the Year 2018)
'With macabre wit and a gothic sense of romance, Jinx returns obsessively to a handful of images. It gives the collection a singular and cohesive vision, while also turning it into a claustrophobic, repetitive nightmare... For this reader, it was electrifying... Jinx is a charming collection. Read it at your peril.' - Tristram Fane Saunders,The Telegraph (Poetry Book of the Month)
'Personal loss and anguish are navigated with furious detachment.' - David Collard,Times Literary Supplement
Abigail Parry spent several years as a toymaker before completing a PhD on wordplay. Her poems have been set to music, translated into Spanish, Serbian and Japanese, and performed or exhibited in Europe, the Caribbean and the US. She has won a number of prizes and awards for her work, including the Ballymaloe Prize and an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection, Jinx (Bloodaxe Books, 2018), dealt in trickery, gameplay, masks and costume, and was described as ‘a party in a bag’ (Declan Ryan) and ‘vaudevillian sleaze’ (Stephanie Sy-Quia). The book was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Prize for Best First Collection, and named a Book of the Year in The New Statesman (Marina Warner), The Telegraph (Tristram Fane Saunders) and the Morning Star (Kate Wakeling). Her second collection, I Think We’re Alone Now, was published by Bloodaxe Books in November 2023, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023.
