Take This One to Bed

The poems in Take This One to Bed explore the passions and tensions of how we live together – as neighbours, as families and as lovers – and as companions to our own various selves.

Here are stories of experience and imagination – of a man’s clothes taking on a life of their own, of a city overcome by an epidemic of weeping, of two goldfish in an emptying house: touching and enchanting tales that combine bittersweet comedy with an unflinching account of human nature.

At the heart of this deeply affecting collection are poems that dwell on the domestic crises that define our lives, that tell ‘how our hurts come down… Hard and without warning’, and ask how we might come to live with them.

Take This One to Bed is a memorable, thought-provoking and ultimately uplifting response, in a poetry ‘made delightful by the elegance of Dunn’s art’ (Acumen).