Dust Sucker

Dust Sucker is a remarkable new book-length poem by writer and translator Jen Calleja. Clear-eyed, expansive, and intoxicating, this exhilarating work deftly blurs disparate themes including time and mortality, communication and translation, intimacy and infertility.

Presented as a deluxe bilingual bookwork, this ‘contemplation of dust’ explores the pollution of our environment – both at home and in nature – and the shoring of mental detritus. With unquestionable poignancy and flashes of sardonic wit, Calleja excavates her English-Irish-Maltese heritage, inherited anxieties, and ambivalence towards childlessness during climate crisis.

Ultimately, Dust Sucker is triumphant proof that even when feeling dusty with despair, there exists a compulsion to find other means to traverse and communicate experience.

This edition includes a German translation by award-winning Austrian poet Carolina Schutti; a companionable doppelganger befitting of a poem that finds connection across languages and in translation.

'Jen Calleja’s furious long poem expresses a great passion for life in its unembellished, unruly form, which includes and incorporates failure, imperfection and even death. A great reminder that we do not need to wait until everything is alright – dust turns out to be a precondition for jest, tenderness and beauty.' – Marion Poschmann

'In this beautiful book, Jen Calleja conjures desire and loss, depth and wistfulness, through her signature hypnotic melodies. We see her plucked blackberries, her antique photos, her infant gulls, and we recognise the pained loss of “sunset/on the toilet paper”. Longings dwell here, as wondrous and abundant as dust.' – Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Contributor: Carolina Schutti (Translated by)

Translator: Carolina Schutti

Pages: 48

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