Contingency, with Horses

Tom Bailey’s and Maya Caspari’s fierce, inventive debut pamphlets explore the psychic impacts of climate breakdown and poetry’s role in documenting looming change

Jul 10, 2025

∙ Paid

A review by Tom Branfoot

Tom Bailey, *Please Do Not Touch or Feed the Horses* (Poetry London Editions, 2025); Maya Caspari, *Almost, With Tenderness* (Out-Spoken Press, 2025)

Be cautious when ‘ascribing human meaning’ to the phenomenal world, warns Tom Bailey throughout Please Do Not Touch or Feed the Horses, which won Poetry London’s 2024 Pamphlet Prize. In …

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