'These poems reject the heroism of the legible "I". If a central figure emerges it might be that of the Anti-Translator, not there to disclose personal information but to reveal the bareness of our "corpse-lives". Jay Gao's Imperium marks a new chapter in British poetry, bringing to bear a new complexity, richness of thought and influence.'
Will Harris, author of RENDANG
'Nuanced, challenging, sometimes hilarious, often anguished, this impressive reimagining of The Odyssey makes for an unforgettable road trip; Gao’s Odysseus is a nervy and compelling traveller, a sort of non-hero, itinerant and always somewhat lost. The translator has always slipped off; we are never in possession of the shibboleth that would admit us home. Waylaid with Gao in hotel bars and tour buses, we are estranged, sensitized as we go to the dislocations and non-belonging of children of the world’s diasporas, and also to the structures of appropriation and exploitation embedded in travel. We are all conditioned and implicated; but perhaps this acute and attentive Odysseus is exactly who we need to help us listen to the buried histories of Imperialism, to “wait a little differently, mourn a / little more”.'
Fiona Benson, author of Vertigo & Ghost
'Jay Gao reminds us in this stunning debut poetry collection, Imperium, that difficulty trades in the spiritual and material. His loosely-based Odyssey showcases a contemporary journey across libraries, book-making, conceptual poetry, sexuality and internationalism, whilst still championing Scotland, his Chinese heritage and sense of continual dislocation as echolocations, as ways of finding out about our plural selves and shifting shapes of the places where we belong, albeit temporarily, nominally, though no less meaningfully.'
Fred D'Aguiar, judge for the 2023 Somerset Maugham Award
'Imperium struck me immediately as the work of a poet mind shot through with intellect and cultural capital. Its strength, for me, is found not only in the fashion it reimagines the mythic, but the manner in which it leans away from this aspect and towards a localised, sensitive and emotive personal register.'
Wayne Holloway-Smith, judge for the 2023 Eric Gregory Award
'With astonishing virtuosity, Imperium unpicks the very notion of virtuosity, and excellence, the inheritances of empire that dominate any idea of what poetry might be or aspire to. Gao’s talent sings and singes so heroically and deliciously across this mournful, provocative, desirous and subversive book. It’s ‘Abecedarian work’ of a sort, lying back and thinking ‘of antiquity’, the better to imagine its ramifications in the present as they come crashing down.'
Colin Herd in Gutter
'Bold and ambitious, Jay Gao’s Imperium demonstrates the eruption of a singular voice and wit [...] Imperium’s linguistic acrobatics similarly draw strength from the range, risk and innovation of the poet’s work. The project is borne aloft by Gao’s capacious imagination and his lyrical as well as formal diligence [...] Gao’s debut emerges as an unforgettable read in these changing and pluralistic times.'
Shalini Sengupta in Poetry School
'The first full collection by the young Chinese-Scottish poet introduces a prodigiously assured and gifted new voice. Gao is searchingly intelligent across an exceptionally wide range of material. This includes bereavement, the natural world, classical myth, US veteran’s trauma and living a hyphenated identity in a post-colonial world – examined, in the poem Hostis, through the image of a mosquito trapped in cling film in an inflight meal. Imperium doesn’t simply namecheck ideas and experiences, but explores them, with vital and disconcerting results. Not Unequal to Many moves with rapid grace from observation of nature to an evocation of classical Greek priests scrying entrails: “those suited egrets waited by the stream for their / sweetbreads / like a map each new world opens with a knife to the body”. This rich hinterland of knowledge is never fusty, always alive, even in the beautiful Body Sonnet, fractured by grief and haunted by “the breath of those / inert evenings … / hospital windows from the last night ever”.'
Fiona Sampson in The Guardian
