Bloodaxe bags Sealey's 'astonishing' poetry collection

Bloodaxe Books has acquired the ferguson report: an erasure by Nicole Sealey, winner the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2021.

The poetry collection will be published simultaneously in the US and UK in September 2023, with British Commonwealth rights secured by Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley from Alfred A Knopf.

The indie will also publish the first UK edition of Sealey’s debut collection, ordinary beast, published in the US under HarperCollins’ Ecco Press imprint. Both contracts were secured with the assistance of Sealey’s agent Tanyon McKinnon, principal of McKinnon Literary, New York.

the ferguson report: an erasure was partly inspired by the US Department of Justice’s 2015 report detailing bias policing and court practices in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, three years after the murder of Michael Brown by Ferguson police.

Sealey revisits the investigation in a book that redacts the report, "an act of erasure that reimagines the entire original text as it strips it away," the synopsis reads. "While the full document is visible on the page in the background – weighing heavily on the language Sealey has preserved – it gives shape and disturbing context to what remains."

Sealey won the UK’s Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2021 with an excerpt from the ferguson report.

Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley commented: “Nicole Sealey is known to many thousands of readers in the UK through #TheSealeyChallenge – which she instigated five years ago – an annual online community challenge to read a book of poetry each day for the month of August. Now we are delighted to be able to make Nicole Sealey’s own poetry collections available to readers here. Her new book the ferguson report: an erasure is an astonishing and culturally vital work. It illuminates what it means to live in this frightening age, and what it means to bear witness.”