Behold

Behold is Nicki Jackowska’s seventh book of poetry. The title poem vividly evokes the history of the Holocaust with precise particulars and mundane details. Her European consciousness and workingclass English roots give her writing an extraordinary spectrum of awareness. Many of the poems are akin to dramatic monologues, moving from a Lewes garden party to characters in a Brighton terrace and thence to Kraków. John Berger writes of the collection that ‘Its grief has penetrated its syntax, and when there’s that kind of penetration – it changes the reader’s breathing.’