In A J Carruthers’s new poetry collection, collisions between disparate languages, histories and ideas — each with their own distinct voices — are staged through a visually arresting and innovative approach to form. Drawing on media such as musical notation, Carruthers writes in vertical verse stanzas that can be read in any direction; recalling the the palindromic poems in the Chinese poetic tradition, they challenge the dominant linear mode of thinking and writing in the West. Z book 3 is the third book in the AXIS series, a lifelong project begun in 2011.‘This book was written in the midst of a grave imbalance among the axes of the world. Voices not my own came from innumerable places and times to speak.’ — A J Carruthers‘AXIS Z Book 3 bears the empathy of this poet for the world, while also bearing witness to the limits of language in the face of human progress.’ — Wang Guanglin
