Sumptuary Laws

Sumptuary Laws, Nyla Matuk’s first full-length collection, is a work of irresistible originality. Taking as her inspiration the feudal rules that once enforced social rank by legistating what a person was permitted to wear and eat, Matuk discovers a new metaphor for contemporary desire and explores, in wildly imaginative and linguistically daring poems, the 21st century “sumptuary laws” that dictate our divisions of luxury and necessity, splendour and squalor. A poet of immense gifts, Matuk has written a book of lasting impact.

Reviews

“An urbane, surrealist-influenced, lexically ingenious whip-smartness shot through with a beating-heart desire.”- Stewart Cole, The Urge