Life Without Air

by Daisy Lafarge

When Louis Pasteur observed the process of fermentation, he noted that, while most organisms perished from lack of oxygen, some were able to thrive 'life without air'. In this capricious dreamlike collection, characters and scenes traverse states of airlessness, from suffocating relationships and institutions, to toxic environments and ecstatic asphyxiations.

Both compassionate and ecologically nuanced, this innovative collection bridges poetry and prose to interrogate the conditions necessary for survival.

Daisy Lafarge was born in Hastings and studied at the University of Edinburgh. Her debut novel, Paul, is forthcoming from Granta Books. She has published two pamphlets of poetry: understudies for air (Sad Press, 2017) and capriccio (SPAM Press, 2019), and her visual work has been exhibited in galleries such as Tate St. Ives and Talbot Rice Gallery. She has received an Eric Gregory Award and a Betty Trask Award, and was runner-up in the 2018 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Daisy is currently working on - a book about infection and intimacy - for a practice-based PhD at the University of Glasgow. Life Without Air is her first collection of poetry.

Genres: Poetry, 21st Century

89 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2020

About the author

Daisy Lafarge is a writer based in Glasgow, UK. Born in Hastings, she has lived in Scotland since 2011.

She is the author of the novel Paul (Granta 2021; Riverhead 2022), which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and the poetry collection Life Without Air (Granta 2020), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and awarded Scottish Poetry Book of the Year.

Her reviews and essays on ecology, art and literature have been widely published, appearing in Granta, LitHub, Wellcome Collection Stories, Art Review, TANK Magazine, The White Review, and elsewhere.

In 2021 she completed a Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow; her thesis focussed on intimacy and infection. The resulting book, Lovebug, will be published in 2023.

Daisy is currently working on her second novel.

Reviews

[Bart Van Overmeire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who would have thought 20 years ago that, instead of working at CERN, I'd be reading poetry about it. Recommended for non-physicists as well (only one poem about CERN 😉).

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Salt and the Slug

Sunday, we sit in like weather

Wife says she didn’t know about the salt
And the slug, she just knew about osmosis
That there are things it is vital to know
But moreso things to forget

That there are facts that go in

And those she pours out like so

Much salt on the slug

(p29)

[kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

effective ecopoetry, reminds me of rachael allen’s god complex. maybe i don’t like ecopoetry

[Krys · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of nature poetry took a while to get going for me, or at least it took me a while to be wholly immersed in the technicality of its language, its borrowing and interpolation of biological and mineralogical lexicon, which comes across as joyous and playful at its best ('if you find yourself canalling / in another's unconscious / or gondoliering back / through wild hoops of absence / rattling off some doggerel verse'), though it can be equally accused of being unnecessarily opaque and esoteric by turns, like being presented with a scientific diagram of sedimentary rock without having the tools to parse its layers. In the second half, particularly in the sections 'understudies for air' and 'Life Without Air', the collection started cohering for me, and I found myself lured by the poems' exploration of absence, death, waste, destruction and deprivation as valid (non-human) forms of being—the flourishing underside of nature.

each morning I walk into the world
looking for signs. early, before light
is normalised by the shadow of buildings
and the gentle fraying of traffic. it seems the signs
are most attracted to states of dereliction.
to receive them, it helps to be empty
but imbued with residual function
like a disused water tower
or any number of withering technologies.
lie back. let the world grow over you
like weeds. consider the sheets of air
gridlocked in double glazing. now
are you beginning to understand?

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rly rly good. Eloquent and imaginative. Eco poetry I guess? Found in lib but am going to purchase!! Could very very nearly be nonsense at points but to me fell just short so I found these poems (and prose vignettes) fantastic.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjN4p...

[Goodreeds User · Rating 4 out of 5]

so crisp and bracing, and full of uncanny surprises

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection, which has made a late dash to take a place in the best poetry I have read this year.

It wasn't always an easy read. I had to dip into the dictionary a couple of times, but that isn't a bad thing. I don't need - or want - to be spoon-fed when I read. Or at least not with every book I read.

I also liked, and this may appear to be a stupid thing to say about a poet, Lafarge's apparent joy in words.

"if you find yourself canalling
in another's unconcious
or gonderliering back
through wild hoops of absence
rattling off some doggerel verse..."
from afflection (28)

Lafarge uses of multi-syllabic words precisely applied delightfully, which I always like. Sometimes a simple word isn't the best word and if that means more work for the reader then why is that a bad thing. None of this is impenetrable.

I particularly enjoyed 'Feed', 'mineral intimacy', 'afflection', 'dog rose duende', 'A Question for Zeno', which is the longest poem in the collection, and 'understudies for air'.

Definitely worth a read. I would write more but I am very tired today and my brain is working effectively as a non-effective thing.

[fantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ecological poetry collection that I enjoyed way more than I thought I would, this collection explores the climate crisis and the social crisis concerning toxic relationships and power structures and how deeply enmeshed they are with one another.

Personal human suffering and global ecological destruction blur together as Lafarge considers the question of what it means to exist with this ever-present suffocating feeling (highly relatable in lockdown) and how human and non-human alike can live a life without air.

Each poem was as fascinating and layered as the topics it dealt with, Not always an easy read I found myself consulting a dictionary but the choice of scientific language and jargon never felt pretentious rather an often joyous exploration. A little difficult to get into but ultimately cathartic I feel will get even better upon a reread.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t sure about this collection on first reading in January but after dipping in and out of it a bit more over the last few months (and especially this weekend), I am starting to really dig it. Lafarge writes with this interesting mix of tenderness and detachment, both about toxic ecological waste and decline and about “life without air” in unhealthy, stifling relationships. Sometimes I get frustrated with the technicality of her language, but overall it’s a powerful collection. Personal faves: Dredging the Baotou Lake, what Genie got, Feed and ghosted.

[Geraldine Snell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is BEAUTIFUL and what's inside is by turns intense, refreshing, vivid, cathartic, potent, AND.. light and airy. A breath of fresh air that will leave you gasping for air. It has re-sparked a love for poetry, words and the expression and naming of tricky sticky stuff.. read alone and aloud around a bonfire with my lockdown housemates who are as in love with these poems as I am.

[Roisin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took a bit to get interested in this. Preferred the second half of this.

[Ada · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,7.

[Jack Mckeever · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars for this one - I think it might be considered a classic in years to come. More coming soon!

You can now read my full review here: https://worldbookhistory.blog/2021/05....

[Deborah]

I don't read much poetry these days (by which I mean I don't read any), so this book club choice was a refreshing change - and a challenge, because LaFarge is a highly technical poet and makes use of her large scientific, theological and classical vocabulary, as well as playing with form and meter. That said, I enjoyed the experience of simultaneously figuring out what she was on about (Wikipedia being my friend) and taking pleasure in some of the bright, unexpected imagery that appears in poems such as 'what Genie got', 'False alarm air', 'The Daughter Channel' and 'axiology'.

The latter are fairly traditional poems, but LaFarge also does rather a good line in a satirical social commentary from a feminist perspective ('Fossil Dinner', 'Feed'), and darker subjects such as coercive control and domestic violence ('A Question for Zeno'). At the same time, some pieces feel immature and self-absorbed. (She's clearly a rather unusual woman, as anyone listening to her 90-minute, very graphic talk on the mating habits of the Praying Mantis might testify.)

There's still much for me to discover in this collection, though part of me feels that for some of her poems at least, once you have 'solved' them, they lose their interest and substance for the reader. But I'm nevertheless pleased to be introduced to her odd, difficult, intriguing work and will likely be returning.

[Joanna Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

very lovely fascinating and layered collection

[Matthew C-L · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really dug this, really unexpected language

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Jennifer’s not in / She’s out looking for lichen / For the silver with the best likeness / To her father’s livered skin” — these lines are the entirety of ‘Jennifer’, the shortest poem in Daisy Lafarge’s ingenious, invigorating collection Life Without Air. The poems are all united by similar erudite themes: from classics and literature to philosophy, history and science, Lafarge covers a wide swathe of intellectual ground, and always in a way that is at once serious + light, unpretentious despite its ambition. Fittingly, a collection so concerned with interdisciplinary ideas is generally wrapped up in ecology, questions of ecological dependency and survival. Despite lucidity, Lafarge manages to evoke some dark trance, endless encounters with breathlessness. My favourite poems include the unsettling ‘Fossil Dinner’ and two poem sequences, ‘understudies for air’ and the sensationally food ‘Dredging the Baotou Lake’: “my love for you outstretches all the pipework of CERN / is a thing no one has ever said, most likely”. Debut collections so accomplished are rare, but following Granta Poetry’s success with Will Harris’ RENDANG, they’re onto a winning streak — thanks in no small part to Rachael Allen’s keen eye.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

An exploration of the climate crisis, which also hints at an abusive relationship between two adults. I really like the ideas of the collection -- a look at science and industry, and how they impacts our understanding of the environment, and the overlap of the personal with our relationship to the external crisis. However, I really struggled with this. I tend to read poetry collections in chronological order, and I only began to connect with this at the third poem from the end, "A Question for Zeno". In this poem, the author becomes much more direct and emotional, and the poem vividly engages with an abusive relationship and its impact on the narrator, as well as the use of the narrative "I", and some of Zeno's philosophical ideas. It's a sophisticated, moving and thought-provoking poem, and I wished the rest of the collection had been more like it. Most of the time I found the poems so illusive I wasn't sure what they were actually about, and the imagery felt vague rather than vivid. Perhaps I am the wrong reader for this book.

[Ginette · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like it. With a background in science I LOVED the premise. But I don’t think me and poetry are destined to get along; fundamentally I didn’t really ‘get it’. Not a slur on the author at all, more on my understanding of poetry I suspect! There were a few clever lines that stood out to me, thought largely I didn’t follow it as I would have hoped.

[Helen Victoria Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Undeniably gorgeous: perfect balance of tangible embodied poetry, layered with rich reference and craft.

My favourite individual poems were Aggregate Air and Ghosted. The latter especially. Really impressive. You think you've read every iteration of a concept, then a poem like this bodies you sideways.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often surreal imagery. Such extraordinary language eloquently articulated (though not always immediately or indeed after several readings, easily understood, at least by me). Still a delight to read and savour.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

happened upon the book by chance in my local waterstones. such a unique book of poetry, the science nerd and poet in me are both very happy reading this! it’s unlike any other poetry book i’ve ever read before 🩵🩵

[Audrey Cook · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not entirely sold on Daisy Lafarge’s writing style, but I love her ideas and her concepts for collections, so eventhough I didn’t particularly get much out of this one I’ll probably continue to read her work! I’m excited by her as a poet.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really a poetry person. I listened to the audio version read by the Daisy. She has a calm, softly spoken, beautiful voice, and the poems washed over me. Some I understood others not, I think this collection warrants revisiting.

[Julia]

These poems weren’t for me. Some lines stood out, but more often than not, I was reading a page, didn’t know what I just read and had to got back, and so on.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

I think the first poetry book I read in coming back to St Andrews this academic year

[Lulu]

I enjoyed - some poems a lot more than others. Really liked 'performing the border', 'gaslit air' and 'fossil dinner'

[Kaisha Seymour · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a lovely collection, i rly want to go back through and read it again and annotate <3