Love Beneath the Nails

Kat Lyons traces lines of grief, resilience and r/age with a storyteller’s sensibility and a lyrical touch. Exploring bereavement, familial relationships, ecological crisis, and Queer life and identity, Love Beneath the Nails scratches at layers of regret, reminiscence and self-delusion to reveal the beauty in the mundane.

By turns tender, visceral and fierce, these poems grip your hand and pull you into a world of acutely observed human frailties with surreal notes; where polar bears work the night shift, Grief eats toast on the sofa, and Shakespeare’s Beatrice defends her cannibalistic choices.

While the first half of the book is written for the page, the second half steps onto the stage. Lyons’ debut spoken word show, Dry Season, is not only an unflinching examination of menopausal chaos, but also a sharp look at societal expectations of age and gender.

Drawing this collection together is our need for connection in a transient world. As Octavia E Butler wrote, ‘the only lasting truth is change’. Love Beneath the Nails is a plea to discover the things that really matter and hold on tight, knowing that everything is ephemeral, and all the more valuable for that.