Kathryn Gray’s long-awaited second collection Hollywood or Home, has as much ruthless glamour as any old Hollywood movie. These worldly-wise poems are seriously playful and playfully serious as they explore celebrity culture. Spectres of Hollywood – moguls, politicians, starlets, and monsters – leap from screen to page. Common tropes are observed, and industry secrets revealed.
In decadent celebrity culture, where a star is born every minute and becomes a flop even more quickly, these fierce and funny poems open space for the writer to reassess failures and successes, to overcome writer’s block, and to remember that we never stop longing for our old dreams to come true. Writing at the top of her game, Gray manages to find spectacle – and survival – out of Hollywood’s brutal disdain for failure.