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Unsafe: A Poetry Book Society Choice

by Karen McCarthy Woolf

Paperback £12.99
Published 12th February 2026
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Description

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE

The third collection from T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf


‘A work of intense epiphany’ ROGER ROBINSON
Unsafe will stay with me forever’ SAFIA ELHILLO
‘As urgent as it is meditative and thought provoking’ PRETI TANEJA

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A disenchanted walk through the afterlives of colonialism across London and LA, Unsafe illuminates the effects of capitalism on those who live at its sharp end.

Situated in the midst of a reckoning with a politics of enclosure, Unsafe is an immersive meditation on place, the body, nature and the self. Whether it’s via tattoos, trees or the totemic quality of cats, McCarthy Woolf pulls us into the processes of gentrification and class division with an immediacy that makes them impossible to ignore.

A moving, critical and highly intuitive epic weaving together poetry, documentary and lyric essay, Unsafe is an interrogation of what it means to be a citizen and testimony to the remaining spaces we can call free.
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‘One of the most intellectually daring writers of our generation’ MONA ARSHI
‘McCarthy Woolf possesses a rare, uncanny power’ KIT FAN

Details

Unsafe: A Poetry Book Society Choice
by Karen McCarthy Woolf

ISBN
9781526666994

Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Binding
Paperback

Publication date
Feb. 12, 2026

Dimensions
19.6cm x 12.6cm x 1.8cm