The Banality of Power by James Byrne
Poetry Book Society Recommendation Summer 2026 Daisy Lafarge he goes toe-to-toe with Pessoa

he goes toe-to-toe with Pessoa as a poet

National Poet of Wales

impact on our lives

There's also an almost - but not quite - dialogue between the poems and the laconic (and sometimes furious) musings of the passages which punctuate them

In 'Borrowed Cardigan'

The Banality of Power by James Byrne <br><b>Poetry Book Society Recommendation Summer 2026</b> Daisy Lafarge he goes toe-to-toe with PessoaPublished 31 May 2026 In The Banality of Power, James Byrne anatomises the everyday mechanics of harm, tracing how cruelty becomes procedure, how violence is normalised, and how authority hides in plain sight. These poems move from Eichmanns glass cage to boardrooms, tabloids, riots, outsourced pain and climate breakdown, always alert to the way institutions convert human lives into abstraction. Byrne braids political witness with history and myth,