Unbound Edition Press today announced it will publish Tomas Unger’s debut collection of poems, Odd Hour. The title is scheduled for publication in March 2026.
Unger works as a high school English teacher and tutor. His essays and poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and The Yale Review. He lives in New York.
Of Odd Hour, Robert Pinsky said, “Tomas Unger has the poetic gift of an enchanted vision of time, in all its limitless range, re-animating rather than merely elegiac: bandura music, the parallel flashing interiors of New York subway trains, Brazil in 1910, the moment of a chess piece held above the board, the intensity of tennis and the ‘immense boredom’ of cricket, famous artists, nameless characters (‘grandparents and torturers/ and exiles’): each real thing illuminated in its own way by the temporal mystery of its passing and its endurance. Odd Hour is a poignant, beautiful read.”
Peter Campion, executive editor at Unbound Edition Press, acquired the title for the house, and is editing the work. He notes: “There is no other contemporary poet like Tomas Unger. He has a unique talent for rendering the mysterious depths beneath ordinary surfaces. There’s a simultaneous directness and subtlety of voice in these poems, suggesting the arrival of a major poet.”
Patrick Davis, publisher and editor in chief at Unbound Edition Press, said, “The press is committed to publishing thoughtfully challenging work, like Unger’s. Odd Hour challenges the very idea of what a lyric poem can be. This breakthrough young author finds what is odd in the ordinary and dissents from the worn habits of so much contemporary poetry in a way that is vivacious and refreshing.”
