McCullough, John - Crowd Voltage

John McCullough's Crowd Voltage addresses yearnings for community. It probes fragmentation within groups and individuals. Engaging with working-class and queer experiences, the poems move between solitude and togetherness, haunted by ghosts from history. To be common here is to share both qualities and stories with many others – to be classed alongside people with similar origins and become connected also to what is commonplace in the world of animals and plants, days and tables. Sky and sea dominate as the speakers search for oneness and completion, confronted by vast silences and the shadow of Brighton’s collapsing West Pier. John McCullough has published 4 previous collections, one with Salt and three with Penned in the Margins. Most recently, the Costa-shortlisted Reckless Paper Birds (2019), winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and Panic Response (2022), which included his long poem 'Flowers of Sulphur', shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.