In a commonplace book, you’d write a recipe, copy a proverb, jot down housekeeping advice, making a precious object out of ordinary things. Maitreyabandhu’s Commonplace Book, his first book-length poem, follows a year from the death of his Buddhist teacher, during which he looks back on scenes from his own life, upbringing, lost loves, and spiritual awakenings. Part epyllion, part diary, it mingles tradition with innovation, comedy with tragedy, traversing the bardo between this life and the next. Maitreyabandhu is a Buddhist teacher and writer. His first book-length collection, The Crumb Road (2013), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was followed by Yarn (2015) and After Cézanne (2019). A Commonplace Book includes a QR code linking to an online video of Maitreyabandhu reading the whole book with musician Jasper Llewellyn.

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The best of these poems speak as much of psychological harm, uncertainty and the divisions we create as they do of unity, beauty, or well-adjusted contentment... In the end, though, the impression is of a poet who combines a self-effacing, observational stance with often searing, complicated feeling... Yarn is a collection where the transcendent promise of Buddhist enlightenment meets with the blunt reality of flawed humanity.