In his debut pamphlet, Max Wallis traces the year-long course of a love affair and all its constituent parts: sex and sensuality, longing and loneliness, desire and disappointment, heady beginnings and inevitable endings; in a world dominated by high street brands, text messaging and social media. Featuring trademark acrobatics with language to in an attempt to grapple with this fast, feisty world, Modern Love recasts love in a sincere, vivacious voice. Max Wallis is inventive, playful and moving by turns, and unflinchingly honest in his writing. Language is both a toy and a knife to him. Modern Love takes the reader through a love affair and does so beautifully, tellingly and adventurously. There is so much here to identify with and to praise. - Angela Topping
Max Wallis shows that modern love is the same as love ever was. The heart beats in the same way, the silences, kisses and stillnesses shared by lovers are as they ever were, ever will be. - Helen Ivory
Modern Love - originally the title of George Meredith's 1862 book of 16-line sonnets, thenceforth known as Meredithian sonnets - looks to trace the year-long course of a passion as echoed through contemporary manners and languages such as texting and Facebook. The subject may, of course, equally be filed under desire, need, obsession, ecstasy, insecurity and fear, but then these are the chapters of the discourse of love. Inventive and intense at best, the discourse here has an urgency that refuses to settle. - George Szirtes Widely published in anthologies, magazines and journals, including Popshot, Cadaverine and Soul Feathers (alongside Carol Ann Duffy and Leonard Cohen), Max Wallis has found recognition early. Between October 2010 and March 2011 he took part in the Barbican Centre's prestigious Young Poet Scheme and proved himself as agile on stage as his work is on the page. Max is currently studying for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester where he is working on a debut novel and a full collection of poetry. He also runs the project somethingeveryday which brings award-winning authors, poets and artists together to challenge their craft through a daily discipline. At twenty-one, Max Wallis has been described by David Hoyle as the future of poetry. Modern Love, his debut pamphlet, gives weight to that claim.