Backalong won the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2023. Judge Imtiaz Dharker said it 'ranges from beautifully restrained grief poems to musically rich sonnets'
Backalong, a dialect word from Nia Broomhall’s native Somerset, describes any point in the past –it could be this March, last March, or 1979. True to its title, her impressive debut collection observes the distant past and recent past with the same eyes: the distant past through poems of place and origin; the recent through poems that track the process of grieving for someone who was right there, not so long ago. Through its musicality of language, Backalong searches for joy, finding what persists – and finding the words to pick out what shines, despite everything.
Fresh as greenness in spring, alive with emotional force, dexterity of form and the surprise of language ("It is a step forward of a word"), Nia Broomhall’s first collection of poems reminds us of what words can do in skilful hands. Grief stalks these poems, but also ‘bright kindnesses/like teaspoons’. Herein is a way of looking at the world anew and full of wonder; these are poems at once moving and perceptive, and bursting with delight, each one original and shockingly alive, as if "orcas had arrived in the room”. – Sarah Corbett