DOE by Conor Hultman (2025, Cloak)

Never Forget Death

It’s hard to describe how much I love randomly coming across new writers and poets and their subsequent books in this scene. It usually happens through some degree of separation: a mutual on X, a writer I like posting about someone, or replying to someone else, starting a chain of micro-events or interactions that I follow, funneling me into purchases.

Often these occur late at night, through tired eyes, after adding and removing the book to and from my digital cart, and finally deciding to ‘take the hit’ of the postage cost, which often exceeds the price of the book itself.

My discovery of Conor Hultman is one such instance, though I cannot say how or when it happened. He was simply there one day, with his black cat avatar.

Just as striking as his avatar is the front cover of his new poetry tome, DOE, a book that defies description so thoroughly that I have put off writing this review while I process its 600-plus distressed pages.

Part poetry and part true crime, though refusing classification as either, this book stands as the literary equivalent of the Grim Reaper on any bookshelf. In a recent photo I took of all the year’s releases I intended to review, its presence could only be described as that of death itself.

The book is composed of evidence from unsolved human remains cases, the majority of which consist of descriptions of clothing, often concluding with hypotheses about the deceased individuals’ unfortunate ends. One of the only ways I could think to describe this book was as, a book of Laura Palmers.

And indeed, the Lynchian strand runs through the descriptions of clothing, T-shirts, jeans, trainers, keyrings. In this sense, the book is a work of Americana, and reading it evokes such a strange feeling that I am struggling to put my finger on it.

I think it is a nihilistic feeling, if I am being truly honest: that the sum of our parts, as organic sentient matter, is barely more than the clothes we will be found in at the moment of our deaths. What we think, what we believe in, our religions, our sexualities, our everything, seem to dissipate into nothingness once our time is up.

If I had a massive heart attack while sitting here typing these words, in DOE terms I’d be:

black T-shirt
black sweatpants
black FCUK brand underwear

and very little else.

A sobering thought, brought on by the excessive consumption of this book.

The episode of True Detective season 1 in which Rust Cohle endlessly examines photos of “DBs” (dead bodies) also came to mind, along with his monologue on death.

“Never forget death” was used as something of a tagline during Conor’s own promotional efforts, which succinctly captures what this book inspires the reader to do.

Although marketed as poetry, it sits more firmly in the true crime category. Presented in such a cold, matter-of-fact way, it operates as the antithesis of a Peter Sotos book. It is not a book of feeling, Conor offers no opinion or emotion of his own.

He is a documentarian; his job is to present the information, leaving it to the reader to feel and respond accordingly.

Which brings me to my final point: what purpose does a book like this serve?

For me, at least, an exhortation on death is, unwittingly, a celebration of life. It is only those who are aware of their own mortality, in no uncertain terms, who are able to recognise what Morrissey so beautifully called “the urgency of life”.

We are all destined to end up as a corpse, documented in most likely the closest morgue to your current location.

The integral question, then, is this:

What do you plan to achieve before you get there?

The primary method for obtaining DOE was via Cloak, here. Though it appears to currently be sold out.

Hilariously, it is available via Target, here.

The book can also be found on Amazon, which may be the most cost-effective method for non-US readers.