‘Plea’s inaugural publication is a collection by the Brighton-based poet, Joe Luna. Air Hunger is a set of poems about finitude and loss; about psychic cannibalism and the inexorable movement of desire inchwards towards death.
“Joe Luna writes extremely careful poems that pursue recklessness. Air Hunger is highly allusive, intricately detailed, and yet unfussy: it flows freely between weirdly earnest Romantic pastiche and formidably dense modernist music. It’s either a giddy celebration of self-destructive love or a melancholic lament for a love that’s not quite self-destructive enough. I can’t decide. But either way, the book is thoughtful and moving, and a great read: come for the alienating compressed syllabics, stay for the humanistic pleasure of recognising yourself in the lyricism of its neurotic involution. Luna’s writing is fraught in the best way.” (Steven Zultanski)
Plea Press, 2018
