Please Do Not Touch
Please Do Not Touch
This is a beautifully shattering collection. How delicately it unstitches small and personal disasters on the page. How Casey flattens Birmingham and soak our hands into its soil so we too feel it’s warmth, it’s grit, the seeds that may still germinate one day. Wow. - Caleb Femi
Walk around any stately home, museum or National Trust property and you are likely to see the words please do not touch more than a few times. The irony is in most cases the sign is telling you not to touch something that was stolen from another land, something that should have never been touched in the first place. Please Do Not Touch asks important questions about these things, about the world and the lives that they have shaped. How have the ill gotten gains of colonialism shaped our society today? How does the noise of the crimes of the past reverberate into our present?
“This is a beautifully shattering collection. How delicately it unstitches small and personal disasters on the page. How Casey flattens Birmingham and soak our hands into its soil so we too feel its warmth, its grit, the seeds that may still germinate one day. Wow.”
“‘Casey is equally at home as a skilled rapper and a poet of subtle poise and stark honesty. The poems within have formal rigour and thematic punch, unafraid to address pain but also linger on moments of irony, beauty and transcendance. One of Birmingham’s best and brightest voices, it’s great to see his words in print.’”