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Arun Jeetoo

Arun Jeetoo has lived in Palmers Green since 2004

A debut collection of poetry by Palmers Green resident Arun Jeetoo will be launched online this weekend.  I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night is published by Waterloo Press.

In addition to his poetry, Arun Jeetoo writes short stories and works as an educator. He is "known for his dirty realism style of work, provocative and raw imagery and dark humour" and his poems have been described as "agile, sensual and achingly honest" and "pulling at the throbbing veins of love".

The launch event will be held on Zoom at 5.30pm on Saturday 3rd October. It will also feature new work by two other poets, Uzmah Ali and Jay Délise, who, like Jeetoo, have benefited from LitUp, Waterloo Press’s mentoring and publication scheme for emerging poets of colour. It aims to "break down the borders between contemporary schools of poetry, to forge a new poetics based on respect for craft, innovation, and the music of real communication".

Register for the book launch on Eventbrite.

Follow Arun Jeetoo on Instagram and Twitter: @g2poetry.

book cover

Arun Jeetoo: I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night (2020)

Tragic and euphoric in its candid representations of love, Arun Jeetoo’s sumptuous debut pamphlet I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night explores the intricacies of loving in the 21st century. Agile, sensual and achingly honest, these poems ask searching questions about the body in romantic and sexual relationships, the literal and metaphorical barriers that contemporary lovers face, and the role of affection in a disconnected world.

£8.00 Buy online.


Arun Jeetoo pulls at the throbbing veins of love: how love is chemical, numerical, dirty, fleeting, a strawberry sauce, ‘batteries in a circuit sparking, a trick of the light ’‒ and how love-magic can only last 53 days, then return ear-stained and electric on day 70. Jeetoo has an amazing talent for the textual and tactile, creating word-exhibitions of cigarette ash, disowned eyelashes, sticky skin, shaking hands pouring wine, initials in stale bark, white-blistered lips and stains without names. He pulls at new technologies and old sayings, spotlighting how really we all just want to be loved. With its easy-to-read range of poetry from the risky experimental fling to the traditional rhythm of romance, this will be a book everyone can cling to, cry over and kiss the paper.

Haley Jenkins, Selcouth Station Press

Love in the age of Google Maps and Alexa, Arun Jeetoo counts the ways: tender, hopeless, hopeful . . .

Dr Louise Lee, Roehampton University

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