Winner of the Hollingworth Prize for Poetry Her Fault
is the debut pamphlet of poems by NJ Stallard. Stallard’s work is
cutting and tender in equal measure. It registers the ‘smallish tremors’
of everyday experience, recognising that it is these small adjustments,
and not the seismic quakes, that make up a life. Stallard's poems are
interested in the world and the way we fail to live up to it. The
‘faults’, then, are not only our flaws and mistakes, but the fissures
between things—between times and places, between people, and between our
senses of self. Language is important because it is one of the ways we
can mend those cracks. Despite their faults, our words give us something
to work with: ‘Here they are: stiff and trying.'
‘Not only are Stallard’s poems full of the richness and vivid detail
of life, they seem themselves living things—sharp, evocative, almost
tangible. This is a completely transportive collection.’ – Rebecca Perry