Soi-même delves into the ‘mechanics of failure’ inbuilt into every situation where desire ebbs and flows, and as subject and object trade places. It seeks to pose questions without answers, about how power is constructed and dismantled in the taking and ceding of control. By turns cerebral and confessional, these poems thread through the space where the mind and body connect, laying bare the urge to unfold ourselves completely to others, and what it takes to do so.

There is elasticity in these poems – a sense of time-travel / Jeanette Winterson / liberation – This collection celebrates the ‘I’ and it is the ‘I’ who navigates us through poetry of juxtaposition and beautiful uncertainty. It is testament to Spires’ control as a poet to leave the reader at such a tender intersection of what is being revealed, and I fell in love with the wholly unreliable ‘I’ of the narration. A masterpiece in why poetry remains vital in contemporary culture

– Wendy Allen

Soi-même beckons the reader through a folio of memory with a narrative of submission and desire towards the “joy in the un- of things” a rediscovery of oneself in a wholly new form. In this collection, Spires’ intellect and precision is a feat and a thrill: “hunger is a learned behaviour” and the reader is drawn to contemplate “we are all just ideas someone else had”; “the myths of yourselves” that perception is not always a clear bright lens, that in remembering and in the living of these scenes we can be liberated. We are given access to that within these pages that lingers long after the last light is switched off.

– Jai Michelle Louissen 

28pp