The much-anticipated debut poetry collection, written and read by acclaimed novelist Susannah Dickey, on the subject of our cultural obsession with true crime.
ISDAL is a timely interrogation of the true crime genre. In the first of its three parts, we follow the flirty co-presenters of a podcast about the mystery of 'Isdal Woman', whose burnt remains were discovered in Norway in 1970 and who has never been identified. At the centre of the book is a philosophical enquiry into our perennial obsession with female victims, sexiness, and death: âThe death in question has already occurredâ, the poet observes, âhas occurred to someone sufficiently abstract as to allow us to romp gainfully, guilelessly, guiltlessly through a simulacrum of deathâs corridorsâ. The free verse poems in the final section both explore andâperhaps inevitablyâenact the ethical ambiguities of the genre. Witty, excoriating, formally ingenious, ISDAL marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent in contemporary poetry.
