The second collection from ‘Thee Poet Unhinged’ Chris Gage, is an exploration of his own battles with mental health issues, heartbreak, bereavement and other assorted taboos and dark subjects; from the sinister daydream of how he would murder his boss to a professional encounter with a now convicted sex offender.
 
This collection serves as a reminder that everyone we meet is either enduring their own battles and are seeking redemption or harbouring their own sinister, dark secrets.
 Would we be able to shine the spotlight of our own scrutiny so readily on ourselves?
Do we know what truly goes through the minds of those we pass on the street or encounter every day at work?
 
Would we so happily and boldly stride through dark places? 
 
“This new collection is full of emotionally affecting poems that clearly and acutely articulate the darkness of depression, and how the author feels it ‘scything, shredding through, synapse’. 
 
Like the poems of American poet Charles Bukowski these are visceral, violent, raw, staccato in their short, urgent lines and not a word is wasted.  A potent expression of the isolation and darkness of mental illness, both terrifying and consoling, and at times a celebration of the everyday joys that can lift us from these dark places.” Anna Saunders, Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.