Poetry must tell the truth – the bare, authentic truth at its ugliest, most transcendent, most obscene, and whittled down to its white bone. Now more than ever. The collection of poems in Longings Across Fences offer complexity, ranging from themes of exile and migration to political absurdity and unforgiving literary existentialism, to love and hatred that are often the same, to the gentle tyranny of beehives and the horror of the empty subway tunnel in a crowded city. Uncover tales of betrayal in love, devotion in adultery, the raw edges of society, feminism as revolution, the marginalised, the hopeful, and the desperate in love and living, and the Bir Tawil of the soul – unclaimed and fenceless. These are not Instagram poems. They are written for readers growing up inside algorithms – adrift, chronically online, yet still desirous of courage.