Jaguar. Sarah Holland-Batt. 2022.

With electrifying boldness, Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and deeply humane portrait of a father’s Parkinson’s Disease, and a daughter forged by grief. Opening and closing with startling elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and fearlessly probing the body’s animal endurance, appetites and metamorphoses. The Jaguar is marked by Hollan-Batt’s lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice. 

Here, Holland-Batt is at her most exacting and uncompromising: these ferociously intelligent, insistent poems refuse to look away, and challenge us to view ruthless witness as a form of love, The Jaguar is an indelible collection by a poet at the height of its powers.