The Cardboard Sublime - Oliver Sedano-Jones
After years of threats, this awkward debut establishes Oliver Sedano-Jones as a middling talent with niche appeal. Turning its tryhard eyes towards themes of disillusionment and bitterness, this collection emerges like a swarm of bats gathering under an electric storm; a prelude to their famous waltz of fangs.
Whether you're kicking yourself gently in the head for failing to meet your parent’s expectations - or kicking your parents for foolishly signing that LPA - this is the book for you... a blessed fall from poetic grace … into a meadow of tender peonies…
The Cardboard Sublime examines the thinness of epiphany and the transience of catharsis. Fool’s gold & zirconia, ennui and its fantastical antidote.
Praise for The Cardboard Sublime
"Whatever that impossible and unsayable thing is. Whatever juice powers Frank O’Hara’s ghost. Whatever keeps the mice in the floorboards, singing that celestial music. Whatever it is, Oliver Jones has it. Most poetry is taxidermy. Oliver Jones’s book is alive, and it will eat your hand.” —Hera Lindsay Bird, author of Pamper Me to Hell & Back
“Oliver Sedano-Jones’ The Cardboard Sublime is a dazzling collection of poems by one of the most exciting British Latinx voices writing today. It’s prophetic language draws comparisons with Frank O’Hara and Selima Hill while invoking the arresting visual imagery of Agnes Varda and the anti-illusionism of Chantal Ackerman.Sedano-Jones also marks new territory in queerness, his poems are full of energy, vitality and irony, exploring youth culture and gay love with sheer intensity. A much awaited voice in the British poetry scene.” —Leo Boix, author of Ballad of a Happy Immigrant
“Totally funny and stark and gut-wrenching, Sedano-Jones’ poems do that special thing of balancing opposites, speaking to the split second of indecision, the chasm, the interstice between yes and no, between a sunset and Jamiroquai. These poems surprised me, and I loved them for it.” —Joe Carrick Varty, editor of Bath Magg
“Delicious. Romantic. Absurd. Sedano-Jones pirouettes through a tundra of hurt, humour and happiness in language that is flawlessly, intoxicatingly new. Give yourself over—growing up has never been this glorious.” —Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, author of Auguries of a Minor God