Poetry Book Society Special Commendation The Independent 50 Best Summer Reads Welcome to a strange new world in which a poem can be written using only one vowel, processed through computer code, collaged from film trailers, compiled from Facebook status updates, hidden inside a Sudoku puzzle, and even painted on sheep to demonstrate Quantum T

Set in the urban pastoral of an east London postcode, Feral City by Meryl Pugh asks what it means to be local and to call a place home, and how best to share that home with its non-human inhabitants.

In Heavy Time academic, writer and psychogeographer Sonia Overall examines what pilgrimage can mean to the secular walker as she journeys from Canterbury to Walsingham, via her home town of Ely.

Luke Kennard recasts Shakespeare's 154 sonnets as a series of anarchic prose poems set in the same joyless house party. Wry, insolent and self-eviscerating, Notes on the Sonnets riddles the Bard with the anxieties of the modern age, bringing Kennard's affectionate critique to subjects as various as love, marriage, God, metaphysics and a sad horse.

Shortlisted for the Costa 2019 Poetry Award. Surreal, joyful, political and queer, Reckless Paper Birds is a collection to treasure by Polari Prize-winning poet John McCullough, ranging across birdlife, Grindr and My Little Pony while also addressing social issues from homelessness to homophobia.

Visceral and analytic at turns, Hopkins' startling collection probes at the undergrowth of English culture; a white-hot debut by a poet of singular vision.