Only connect

This is Tom Proverbs-Garbett’s first published collection of poetry. The 36 lyric poems, arranged in narrative form, are inspired by media coverage of cult leaders convicted of crimes against their followers. The author notes that, despite the convictions, some followers continue to abide by the leaders’ teachings. 

The collection explores the power of leadership and what draws a person to join a modern-day cult.

The reader follows strangers Chresta and Eran as they navigate their separate searches for human connection and community in an increasingly digitised and individualistic world, against the isolating backdrop of an unforgiving modern city.  

Both characters grapple with feelings of entrapment, unfulfillment and loneliness, their day-to-day lives a mosaic of hours spent working alone within the same four walls, before reaching for a smaller screen and scrolling through the night – a cycle familiar to many readers in the post-Covid era. In the collection, ‘The Adept’ – the ‘leader’ – preys on the protagonists’ desperation to seek direction and purpose.

Proverbs-Garbett’s debut observes how today’s society feeds on the vulnerability of those craving authentic relationships. Through dark imagery and jarring language, it painfully but sensitively depicts how a person can inhabit a city such as London, brimming with life and noise and opportunities, and still feel lost and suffocated. It underlines the ever-changing possibilities – and above all, danger – posed by advancing technology and its users. 

The irreplaceable magic of organic human connection is at the heart of this collection. It is an unnerving and confronting – but ultimately lifting – read, serving as a sobering reminder that any of us could fall victim to the likes of ‘The Adept’. 

Amy Coleman is web content editor at the Law Society Gazette