Shortlisted for the 2021 Raymond Souster Memorial Award

Shortlisted for the 2021 A. M. Klein Poetry Prize

Adapted as a mono-opera film, Light

In her second collection of poetry, Klara du Plessis returns with a Dantesque trilogy on family, discipline, and the ferocity and brilliance of creation. Hell Light Flesh drops the reader into a narrative claustrophobically entwined in unquestioned systemic violence where art and art criticism act as a constant glimmer of hope. Over and over, the poem lends itself to allegory, and yields to layers of interpretation. Hell Light Flesh is mandatory reading for devotees of the long poem and fans of du Plessis’ thrilling brand of essayistic poetry.

Purchase: Palimpsest Press, 2020.

Hell Light Flesh was adapted into a mono-opera film, Light, by composer Jimmie LeBlanc and director Michael Hidetoshi Mori. Read more…

Reviews

“Oh, the Places We’ll Go!” Alexei Perry Cox. The Puritan, Issue 52, Winter 2021.

“The Corporeal Tongue: Hell Light Flesh by Klara du Plessis.” Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi. The Capilano Review, Translingual Issue, Fall 2020.

“Poetry Roundup.” Emilie Kneifel. Montreal Review of Books, 5 November 2020.

“Living Violence.” John Nyman. Carousel Magazine, 3 October 2020.