Altar / Desree

Poetry Book Society Recommendation Spring 2025

darling slough,
i love you like rain.

graveyard with no tombstones.
adventure playground some children
play on, others lie underneath. 

i can’t walk through the newbuilds
without hearing the men i loved
bleating inside you. 

The debut poetry collection from award-winning writer and spoken word artist, Desree, Altar explores multifaceted dimensions of sacrifice, challenging its heroism and examining its ties to servility. The poems in Altar urge their protagonists to play neither lion nor lamb, but to live and flourish on their own terms. Each page glimmers with vivid, often devastating vignettes: we witness the resilience of youth, the strength of the Black female body, the complexity of chosen and unchosen family, the sweeping effects of gentrification. Through reflections on Black British identity, queer joy, place and belonging, faith and consent, Desree invites the reader on a journey of reclamation, while her wry wit and disarming tenderness hold us through the necessary storms that mark the way.