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I first became aware of Ariana Reines’s work through her early poetry collection The Cow (2006), which went on to win the prestigious Alberta Prize I was struck by its focus on abjection, female filth and the damage we inflict on animal bodies Reading that collection marked the start of a full on, visceral engagement with Reines’s work The expansiveness and courage of her voice has helped to build my sense of what poetry might be capable of at its best – visionary, politically engaged, wrestling with the point at which body and spirit meet   Reines’s books are works of intellectual commitment and structural sophistication; at the same time, they allow the raw stuff of being, in all its messiness, to enter the page Her work experiments with form and structure, often using long lines and unorthodox punctuation, alongside a rangy, conversational and slangy diction – all of which leads to a sense of delicious intimacy with this rich and dynamic poetic voice It is poetry I continue to teach, read and respond to, a touchstone of inventive poetics   Reines was born in Salem, Massachusetts, lending her what she describes as a ‘heavy Salem lineage’ The awareness of female agency as ‘threat’ is ever present in her books; that strange mixture of a power that is both terror and desire As a poet, playwright and translator, Reines is concerned with the complications of female experience and liberation and how these meet the knowledge of the body, and in excavating the difficulties and strange pleasures of contemporary sexual and romantic relationships She writes stringently about the death-cult of late capitalism, and its chaotic imaginary Reines is also interested in the occult, and the ways in which it might open up new kinds of spiritual and poetic understanding This is most clearly seen in her alchemical work Mercury, which explores symbolism and transcendent experience It re-appears in the titanic ambition of her newly published collection A Sand Book, which explores Jewish identity, spiritual transformation, and the poison of climate collapse – interrogating the space between the divine and the self The book is both a