20. Poetry After Auschwitz: Walking in West Cornwall with the Ghost of Great-Aunt Hilde (2024) – Ben Barkow

2024. Paperback publication, poetry 

A series of linked poems, in which Ben Barkow explores the
lives of his grandparents and their siblings and those of his
parents. By directly going up against Adorno’s famous dictum that
to write poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric, he probes the
limits of representation in the context of the overwhelming need
to let the suffering of the victims speak. Implicitly he articulates
the haunting and haunted reality of a life lived in the long shadow
of the Holocaust.

With thanks to M., H., and B. Barkow.

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