{"id":20870,"date":"2022-09-12T13:00:17","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/?p=20870"},"modified":"2025-12-04T10:33:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T10:33:41","slug":"improvised-explosive-device","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/improvised-explosive-device\/","title":{"rendered":"Improvised Explosive Device"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Improvised Explosive Device<\/em> is a startlingly innovative exploration of extremism, hate crime and violence by poet Arji Manuelpillai. In this powerful and unsettling first collection, Manuelpillai presents a vision of the contemporary haunted by Melville\u2019s image of the whale \u2013 the terror beneath the surface of the sea. His uncompromising focus on violence is laced with gallows humour and the surreal, framed against the mundane detritus of modern life: two boys playing <em>Mortal Kombat<\/em>; a field of old trainers; the lonely glare of laptop light; a suspicious looking package in the back seat of a van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The poems in <em>Improvised Explosive Device<\/em> emerged through research and interviews with academics, sociologists, and former members of extremist groups and their families \u2013 from the English Defence League and the National Front to ISIS and the Tamil Tigers. These complex, unnerving texts ask a series of important questions. What drives a person to commit a radical act of violence? How is that violence mediated through screens and social media? And how does the British government police marginalised groups? <em>Improvised Explosive Device<\/em> is a brave, surprising and risk-taking book; it will change the way you look at the world.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"position: relative; width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/764900114?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" frameborder=\"0\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Improvised Explosive Device is a startlingly innovative exploration of extremism, hate crime and violence by poet Arji Manuelpillai. In this powerful and unsettling first collection, Manuelpillai presents a vision of the contemporary haunted by Melville\u2019s image of the whale \u2013 the terror beneath the surface of the sea. His uncompromising focus on violence is laced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[322,173,4,29],"tags":[149,93,109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20870"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20898,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20870\/revisions\/20898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}