Praise for Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat

Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat sounds like the title of a portrait, and indeed this is a work of portraiture: a subject closely observed, meticulously populated with colour, and elaborated into vivid, arresting life.

That subject is a very particular queer love, one that Costa renders both with tenderness and shamelessness – at turns eros, at turns agape, decadent in all the senses of that word. That also makes it a stark piece of melancholia, but the kind of melancholia you’d want to take a bath in.

This book made me blush, and it surprised me, and it hurt in the very finest way.

David Nash, author of The Islands of Chile

Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat is a stunning debut that charts love and loss, honouring scenes between lovers that are at once unique and recognisable, and heightened in memory.

Costa’s deeply intimate work invites us not only to read, but to share in feeling. These poems are propelled by their quiet music; Costa’s talent for precise language and rich imagery is palpable. These are poems of abundance – of the natural world, of emotion and of the body – heady with the taste, scent, and colour of wine, vermouth, orange zest, and morello cherry.

Lauren Garland, author of Darling

Luís Costa’s debut pamphlet woke me up last night. I couldn’t stop thinking about the lines: “what if I am lighting / candles for the living”.

Costa has a way of writing about difficult feelings in a beautiful way; I feel less alone in my queerness knowing that Costa is writing poems about queer love for us all.

Jo Morris Dixon, author of I Told You Everything

About Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat

Luís Costa’s Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat is an exciting debut, with poems that alternate between steamy, loving, surreal, and heart-breaking.

These poems play with language in all its possibilities and speak to all of the senses.

Luís is a Portugal-born, London-based poet, with work published in Queerlings, Stone of Madness, and Visual Verse, among other places.

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