There are some very striking images and strongly expressed scenes in Safa Khatib’s A Dress of Locusts (including the image that gives the title!), and I’m kind of sad I don’t like it more. The poems are very readable and easy to follow (except for one or two where I found the layout slightly annoying), but I didn’t really find my way in.

A large part of that is the sexual content of the poems. I wouldn’t generally consider myself prudish at all, and of course sex has a place in poetry, but the way sex is treated in these poems — I don’t know. Each time it stuck out and felt like a surprise, an inclusion designed to shock and disrupt, and it didn’t work well for me.

Maybe reading it unprepared as a random choice from the National Poetry Library was part of it; sometimes I think poetry can benefit from a little context. That said, I don’t think it would ever have quite worked for me, though as ever I’m really glad to be able to explore poets I’ve never read before and broaden my frame of reference. I don’t regret reading it, even if I didn’t enjoy it.