Arguing with Malarchy

A collection of poetry by South African-born, Yorkshire-based Carola Luther, this account is a chronicle of mourning, renewal, and the realities of human relationships. Addressed to the eponymous ‘Malarchy’—a magical, quarrelsome, and often drunken young boy—these poems explore silences, absences, the unspoken communication between animals and human beings, the pauses and boundaries between what is remembered, forgotten, or invented, the living, and the dead. By turns tender and cantankerous, they also examine the author’s homosexuality and sense of migration and displacement.