Ellen Hinsey¿s new book-length sequence, The Illegal Age, is a powerful investigation into the twentieth-century¿s dark legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality. It explores the enduring potential for human beings to set neighbour against neighbour and commit final acts of violence. A book of lyrical reflection and prophesy, The Illegal Age chronicles the arrival of a new, disquieting reality unfolding in our midst.
As Marilyn Hacker has written, ¿In dialogue with Celan, Szymborska, Milosz¿ this is a daring text ¿ for its political acuity, and for its demonstration of the power in poetry to recount, remember, move the heart while opening the mind.¿
Written in parallel with her first-hand research into the rise of authoritarianism carried out over the last decade, Hinsey's volume warns that ¿ rather than an ¿Age of Anxiety¿ ¿ we may indeed be facing the start of the ¿Illegal Age¿.