Ellen Hinsey's new book-length sequence, The Illegal Age, is a powerful investigation into the twentieth-century's dark legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality. It explores the enduring potential for human beings to set neighbour against neighbour and commit final acts of violence.

Ellen Hinsey¿s new book-length sequence, The Illegal Age, is a powerful investigation into the twentieth-century¿s dark legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality. It explores the enduring potential for human beings to set neighbour against neighbour and commit final acts of violence. A book of lyrical reflection and prophesy, The Illegal Age chronicles the arrival of a new, disquieting reality unfolding in our midst. As Marilyn Hacker has written, ¿In dialogue with Celan, Szymborska, Milosz¿ this is a daring text ¿ for its political acuity, and for its demonstration of the power in poetry to recount, remember, move the heart while opening the mind.¿ Written in parallel with her first-hand research into the rise of authoritarianism carried out over the last decade, Hinsey's volume warns that ¿ rather than an ¿Age of Anxiety¿ ¿ we may indeed be facing the start of the ¿Illegal Age¿.