Paper Doll

Staking a landmark for the UK's Latinx community, Katherine Lockton's début pamphlet, Paper Doll, is a tract of the unseen made visible and given a striking, defiant vocabulary. There is no smooth ride to be had here. As the poet puts it in the poem The Paper Doll Chain, “she will defy me; time after time/ teaching me how to live when she does.”

Proudly staking a landmark for the UK's Latinx community, Katherine Lockton's début pamphlet, Paper Doll, strikes the poetry landscape as disruptively as a meteor scars earth with its impact. Documenting a shape-shifting existence between activist and survivor, immigrant and alien, lover and loner, this is a tract of the unseen made visible and given a striking, defiant vocabulary. Having fallen from a building as a child in Bolivia, Katherine seems to have retained an ability to stack images that zip along, only leaving an imprint of their meaning as the poem descends to its conclusion. This quality, combined with a contrasting directness makes reading Paper Doll a profoundly affecting experience. There is no smooth ride to be had here. As the poet puts it in the poem The Paper Doll Chain, “she will defy me; time after time/ teaching me how to live when she does.”