Whip-hot & Grippy

'Heather Phillipson's whip-smart and glitchy Whip-hot & Grippy...'s at the centre of a school I tentatively labelled the New Witchcraft in these pages; they're all deliciously OTT, and have urgent things to say.' - Tristram Fane-Saunders, The Telegraph (Christmas Poetry Books 2019)

'It's been a brilliant year for poetry: in particular, I've loved Nisha Ramayya's States of the Body, Produced by Love (Ignota), Heather Phillipson's Whip-hot & Grippy (Bloodaxe), Rachael Allen's Kingdomland (Faber), and Tom Betteridge's Dressings (Materials).' - Helen Charman, The White Review (Books of the Year 2019)

'Next year [2020] Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth will hold an enormous dollop of whipped cream, topped with a cherry, a fly and a buzzing drone. Created by British artist and author Heather Phillipson, that sugar-rush sculpture - surreal, witty and grotesque - captures the essence of her poetry.' --Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph, Poetry Book of the Month (on Whip-hot & Grippy)

'At times tender...comic/visceral...and philosophical...this epic plays out in multiple poetic forms, both visual and linguistic.' --Oliver Basciano, ArtReview [on 'more flinching' from Whip-hot & Grippy]

'Much of Whip-hot & Grippy is a lurid, loud, and technicolour blurring of 'high' and 'low' culture... In its nihilism, references to pop culture, destabilising ridicule of everyone and everything, Phillipson's work is exactly what I want, all the time.' --Jenna Clake, The Poetry School

‘There’s a knowingly self-defeating quality to the OTT maximalism, and a deadpan humour that her poetry brings to light.’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, Poem of the Week, The Telegraph (on Whip-hot & Grippy)