Imperium By Jay Gao

The first full collection by the young Chinese-Scottish poet introduces a prodigiously gifted new voice. Gao is intelligent across a wide range of material. Not Unequal to Many moves with rapid grace from observation of nature to an evocation of classical Greek priests scrying entrails: “those suited egrets waited by the stream for their / sweetbreads / like a map each new world opens with a knife to the body”. This rich hinterland of knowledge is never fusty, always alive.