Other Lovers

Jackie Kay’s widely acclaimed first collection The Adoption Papers marked the emergence of an exciting new talent in contemporary poetry. In her second collection, Other Lovers, she achieves an even greater range, exploring the qualities of love in a variety of relationships, rooted in the past or present. In doing so, she looks afresh at the way we now live. The poems move from the familiar – the parent, the child, the lover – to the extraordinary – including a sequence on the Blues singer Bessie Smith – and are, by turns, poignant, bitter-sweet, joyous and funny. Other Lovers is now out of print but all the poems from the collection are included in Darling (2007).