Sublime Lungs

In Sublime Lungs Kate Noakes turns her attention to the breath. For the first time, she explores her lifelong asthma and explains the impact of this chronic and disabling condition. The breath and breathing are subjects for poems from many chronologies and geographies in this her ninth collection.

‘If one measure of a poet’s line is their breath, then you’d expect a poet with asthma to be a little curtailed by it. Not so Kate Noakes. Sublime Lungs finds poem after poem burgeoning out of the condition and leading her to find no trace of Keats in Rome, but allegories in witchcraft, Kent Marsh Frogs or Blade Runner, and to have a double-edged view of nature, which for her can be kill or cure. Whether in Machu Picchu or Boston Library, referencing Charles Olson in Gloucester, or relating to lovers and children, Noakes starts from the breath in her lungs and takes off into air.’ — MATTHEW CALEY

‘From Egyptian breath cures to Katherine Mansfield’s inhaler to the thin air of the Rocky Mountains and Machu Picchu, Kate Noakes’ latest collection evokes all the elements of a life lived with asthma. With each successive poem, Sublime Lungs expands the scope of how this condition affects one’s experience of the world in poems by turns witty and moving. This is poetry that attunes us to the nuances of our own embodiment.’ — CARRIE ETTER