“Iulia David’s poetry crackles and brims with life. Not just liveliness but life, its chemical actions, its subterranean logic, its pressure and need for what’s next. Once the poem is underway the lines don’t come from the poet who began it, but stream from a soul within, beneath, moving and mutating as it rides the light and dark. Structural and imaginative truth are there of course, but the forces here are cellular, making work that feels both timeless and passing-as-you-breathe. A brilliant debut from a vital new voice.” – Glyn Maxwell

“Iulia David’s poems are like those intricate puzzle boxes that can only be opened through a series of delicate operations – they yield treasures at their core. What David conjures is that strange hinterland between experience and memory, childhood and the terrible passage of time – and finds her own language to navigate it. Her poems are beautiful haunted spaces, both comforting and unsettling. Hers is a startling new voice.” – Tamar Yoseloff