Caleb Parkin's second collection delves into the interplay between landscapes and human bodies, exploring themes of hyper-wealth and climate nationalism. The poems are infused with a dark, mischievous tone, revealing the toxicities that arise from these contemporary issues. Through vivid imagery and sharp observations, the collection invites readers to reflect on the complexities of modern life and the environment.
Exploring themes of identity, mortality, and familial relationships, the collection delves into the author's matriarchal lineage and the impact of cancer on family dynamics. With lyrical intensity, the poems reflect on life, death, and existence, intertwining humor, irony, and surprise throughout. The work captures the complexities of the grand/mother/son relationship, offering profound insights into the human experience.
Caleb Parkin’s debut poetry collection, This Fruiting Body, plunges us into octopus raves and Sega Megadrive oceans, in the company of Saab hermit crabs and ASDA pride gnomes. It’s a playful invitation to a queer ecopoetics that permeates our bodies and speech, our gardens, homes, and city suburbs. It reintroduces us to a Nature we’ve dragged up until it’s unrecognisable.Parkin’s perceptive poetry sparks with neon visuals, engaged in the joyful, urgent, imagining of alternative realities and new futures. How might we relate queerly and dearly to our environment and its shared conundrums? These adventurous poems delight in human and nonhuman intimacies, teem with life, ponder bug sex and put masculinities under the microscope. This Fruiting Body roves our grandiloquent planet, embracing our kinships with matter, culture, creatures and drag-mother Earth herself.