Author(s): Anthony Anaxagorou

Poetry | FT Books of the Year 2022

The third collection from the award-winning author ofAfter the Formalities, tackling migration, identity andhistory. Witty and wide-ranging, Heritage Aesthetics draws from Anthony's family'smigratory histories - between Cyprus and the UK - to interrogate patriarchy,xenophobia and national divides. Spanning from the British Empire to thecontemporary moment, Anaxagorou unpacks the travelogues of colonialwriters and military men alongside experiences of racism in the present.

Yet this collection never settles into being 'about' identity or contemporaryculture. Anthony's adept, eviscerating eye continues to complicate - looking athow perception is shaped, how we perform our politics, and how we love whatis hard to love. Offering no easy answers, Anaxagorou instead calls for adeeper interrogation of the ways in which we're living and performing.

Fearless, intensely honest and hopeful, Heritage Aesthetics merges Anthony'sgift for performance and his brilliant experimentation with form to create avivid insistence to communicate a self in the world.