Seeing, against fascism. Verity Spott’s Hopelessness

Abstract

Verity Spott (1987) has expanded the possibilities of radical poetry in the UK. Her main works to date are Gideon (Barque Press, 2014), Click Away Close Door Say (Contraband Books, 2017), Hopelessness (The 87 Press, 2020), Prayers, Manifestos, Bravery (Pilot Press, 2020), The North Road Songbook (Pilot Press, 2024). This article seeks to show how Hopelessness thinks through the connections between psychic pain and the political without following the customary pathways which privilege and fetishize trauma. I propose that in language and form Hopelessness pushes against positivistic denial of psychosis as a mode of experience, experience whose validity the dominant language and culture disallow.

I see it as a book that makes its way through despair—understood as a response to the current destructiveness of social forces, of which fascist fantasy is a major part—by dismantling re-envisioning what is supposed to be reality. There is humour and satire in Verity Spott’s mode of proceeding and, above all, the force of poetic thought.