Friday, 11 July 2025

10 Years of Publications -- 2020




2025 marks ten years of V. Press publishing solo-authored titles and, as part of our celebrations, we're sharing our year-by-year publications over that period.

The press was originally launched at Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2013 with a one-off poetry chapbook anthology before moving on to solo-authored poetry pamphlets in 2015.

Our first solo-authored poetry collection and our first flash fiction pamphlet came out in 2016. There have been illustrated poetry pamphlets, a dual-authored poetry pamphlet and a full-length flash fiction title along the way.

Today, we highlight our 2020 titles and celebrate extra delights from that year!

The Neverlands by Damhnait Monaghan winner of Saboteur Awards 2020 Best Novella!

An Inheritance by Diane Simmons shortlisted!


I, Ursula -- Ruth Stacey -- 31 January 2020

I, Ursula is a full-length collection of very haunting and very enigmatic poems by Ruth Stacey.

“Ruth Stacey's new collection revels in the frank and often stark geographies of mental health and the playful and often political complexities of the muse. By creating a sweeping panorama of the blindingly-bright – and occasionally dangerous – contexts in which the muse inspires, cajoles, and deceives, I, Ursula animates the raw truths of emotional fragility and various forms of haunting through a staggering range of voices and ghostly imaginings. This inventive tour of connection and disconnection, observing and being observed, leaves the reader contemplating power dynamics in both relationships and the creation (and consumption) of art in chilling new ways.” Carolyn Jess-Cooke

“Stricken and painfully well-observed, Ruth Stacey’s new collection is replete with our magical excuses, boundless infatuations, loyalties and sanctuaries. Her work is particularly poignant on the porousness between our inner and outer lives. To enter the poems is to feel another consciousness pressing against your own through a boundary that seems, for a moment, not to exist.” Luke Kennard

This title is now out of stock. More information about I, Ursula can be found here.


Winter with Eva -- Elaine Baker -- 14 February 2020

“This is a poignant but tough love story told against the backdrop of Brexit-era England. Eva is Romanian, a free spirit with a beautiful soul navigating the ignorance and hatred of her adopted country. Elaine Baker’s powerful but understated narrative is told from the perspective of Eva’s British lover, Sean, who is at once enchanted but also bewildered by her foreignness, her language, her precarious status in a country that isn’t hers – all the things that threaten to drive them apart. So what begins as a love story evolves to encompass a greater theme – these poems speak eloquently of the way we live now.”
Tamar Yoseloff

“Elaine Baker writes so beautifully about love: macrocosmic passion and domestic comfort are drawn with sharp, sensual tenderness. But Winter with Eva is also a timely sociopolitical exploration and a gripping page-turner of a pamphlet, one to read carefully yet compulsively in a single sitting.” Rachel Piercey

Winter with Eva is very human, very conscious.

A sample poem from this
 poetry pamphlet/sequence can be found below. More information and ordering for Winter with Eva can be found here.


Crowns

We’re all set up –
two beers. Mixed nuts.
Half a plastic tub of Roses on the rug.
It’s a Wonderful Life
playing out on the telly.

You’ve been baking
and before you’re back with the plate
I can already taste the cozonac –
sweet and melting.

We pull the crackers,
put on the paper crowns
hold hands,
settle down to watch George Bailey drown
in his small American town.

Every year’s the same.
I pretend this isn’t crying.

It doesn’t get you
till the end,
when all George’s friends descend,
fill the room with smiles,
empty their pockets to an impromptu chorus of
‘Hark the Herald’.

Now your tears are coming,
there’s no stopping them.

You say you miss the singing.
Where are all the children?


An Inheritance -- Dianne Simmons --  28 February 2020

An Inheritance is a gem of a novella. It succeeds in spanning seventy years and four generations of one family, exquisitely capturing their relationships, secrets and divided loyalties. The historical changes wrought by each decade are delicately interwoven throughout the twists and turns within the family’s life. This captivating narrative will make you weep and smile.”
Joanna Campbell

“Despite large secrets and larger financial woes, one family’s superior love, kindness and understanding pulls them through the hardest of times, from generation to generation. An Inheritance is a poignant heart-warmer of a novella-in-flash and is a useful lesson in the importance of kindness in this life.”
Nuala O’Connor

An Inheritance is very readable and very intriguing.

A sample flash fiction from this novella-in-flash can be found below. More information and ordering for An Inheritance can be found here.


Profit and Loss
1932

Thomas takes the cameo brooch. 

“The mount is gold,” the customer says. “It was a present from my husband on our wedding day.”
    Thomas reads the inscription on the back: 14th May 1930. Not even two years ago. “It must be difficult for you to part with this Mrs Baldwin – even temporarily.”
    “My John wouldn’t be happy about it, but…”
He nods and searches in the drawer for his eye glass, relieved that he has an excuse to look away. When Mrs Baldwin had first started coming into the shop, she’d been pretty. Now she’s emaciated, her eyes shrunken and her face pale. He sees so many customers with tuberculosis. At least she has something worth pawning – many don’t. Recently, he was tricked into giving a good price for a bundle of clothes, only to find that someone had hidden a cabbage inside to make the parcel heavier. The smell in the storeroom was ghastly. His father would never fall for such a trick, but Thomas, guessing at the customer’s desperation, was almost glad to be deceived. 
Thomas picks up the eyeglass, does a quick calculation, offers a loan of five guineas.


Six months after Mrs Baldwin’s death, Thomas removes the brooch from the safe. He has taken care to follow the business’s guidelines to the letter. His father won’t tolerate special treatment or any display of compassion, even for a grieving husband burdened by doctor’s bills and funeral costs. The brooch must go up for sale today and a profit recorded.
     He cleans the brooch, attaches a two-guinea price tag to it and places it on a velvet tray in a prominent place in the shop window. By lunchtime, two people have inspected it, but it doesn’t sell. By two pm, despite brisk trade and a lady promising to return within the hour, it still hasn’t sold. By four, concerned that his father will arrive soon to shut up the shop, Thomas moves the brooch out of the window, wraps it in tissue paper and puts it into his breast pocket. 
     With one eye on the door, he takes five guineas out of his wallet and places the money into the till. It’s more than he can comfortably spare, but he’ll find a use for the brooch one day. Neatly, he records the transaction in the ledger – sale price in one column, profit in the next – just as his father likes it.


Ynygordna -- Kelly Williams -- 27 April 2020

Ynygordna is not a twee poetry collection for your kitschy coffee table display – this is a no-holds-barred fistfight with blood, guts and strap-ons. Williams is a true warrior poet and these poems will wound you. You’ve been warned.”
Jonathan Kinsman

“Bristling with vivid imagery, vibrant language and powerful emotions, these poems are not afraid to challenge conventional boundaries in poetry as in life. Ynygordna is a fresh and striking selection of poems, encompassing a bold and brave exploration of gender, sexuality and love within and against societal expectations.”
Sarah Leavesley, V. Press Prize for Poetry Judge

Ynygordna is very ardent and very versatile.

Winner of the V. Press Prize for Poetry 2019

A sample poem from this pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Ynygordna can be found here.


futch

Scream what needs to be said: the labels
found on ver body are engrained in our minds,
not ver skin.

Take pride in fingers that move two at once
and sex that sings in newborn cells
in the amygdala of closet mannequins.

There is urgency in a body that does not
align with walls it sleeps within,
animated suddenly in a light not blurred
by straight-lined articles.

Ve meets me in a place
where thumbprints are moulded in mercury;
the blood of clouds runs with ver, neither
disappearing into sky nor wandering
upon pavements.

Ve is between the lines of my favourite poem,
the blank page in the introduction fated
to be folded and scribbled.

Splintering euphoria

in strips of jock-strap clips:

trimmed fingernails trace letters of wildfire
in scripts made louder than the sirens
of a bordering wall.


A Bluebottle in Late October -- John Wheway -- 18 May 2020


“John Wheway’s first full collection places its trust exactly where it should be: in the poetic present tense where every gnomic detail is magnified, every commonplace brought to its own species of transfiguration. At a time when the lyric is so much in need, he rejuvenates it in its most pellucid and most effortless form; the couplet is reshaped and crystallised, and comes to life. A Bluebottle in Late October is a memorable sequence of poems.” Tim Liardet

“This is a funny, sad, yet uplifting account of how we live and love. Poems by a formidable poet, pulling no punches, yet with a delightful lightness of touch.

Domestic bliss is here, with moments of tenderness and beauty, hopelessness too, and a deep urge to engage. How can we live together? Why do we need to?  What compels us?

These poems made me laugh out loud, though their acuity is sobering. We’ll all glimpse ourselves in them. Marked by meticulous diction and vibrant imagery, this is poetry with an authentic voice.” Neil Rollinson

A Bluebottle in Late October is very particular and very human.

A sample poem from this full-length collection can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for A Bluebottle in Late October can be found here.



Making Up 

At the mirror, she takes a step back, 
like an artist changing places 

for a different angle, absorbed 
not in herself 

but in the portrait’s subject, dabbing 
pigment over each cheek, circling 

with the tip of her pinkie to reveal 
unseen depths. 

He’d never seen his mother in her, 
but now he’s like the boy who watched 

the woman in the strapless dress, lips kissed 
with Rouge Noir, hurrying 

downstairs to the street, bowing 
into a waiting taxi. He’d peer 

between the curtains, noticing 
the eagerness in her pace, 

not knowing what it meant, 
though he knew she loved to dance, 

and that the Polish captain 
who gave him that red fire engine 

was not his father’s friend.



Alice in Wonderland Syndrome -- Meg Pokrass -- 22 June 2020

“There could be no more apt title for Meg Pokrass's collection of brilliant and brilliantly disquieting flash fictions than 'Alice in Wonderland Syndrome', a condition in which objects appear larger or smaller than they should. Pokrass's stories are so much greater than their word count, entire worlds, but they also make the tiniest moments vital, enormous. Here, people – and, once, a rat – are on the edges of things; there is no settling in these worlds, as in ours, and animals are often more reassuring than humans. Is the ‘she’ who recurs in the stories Alice herself, or many Alices? Or is she us, trying to find our footing, to shrink and to grow, to restore some balance in a world that is forever tilting?”
Tania Hershman


“‘…there is always a story inside a story inside a dog…’ With dreamlike clarity, these beautifully choreographed stories slip, delve and spiral in and out of the quotidian and the surreal with such deftness and precision that like Alice in her wonderland, suddenly you find yourself catching your breath in the light and dark of a world both familiar and yet deliciously unsettling. Pokrass has once again produced an exquisite collection for our enjoyment.”
Mary Jane Holmes

Alice In Wonderland Syndrome is very tender yet very naughty.

A sample flash from this pamphlet can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Alice In Wonderland Syndrome can be found here.

Alice In Wonderland Syndrome is also available internationally (outside of the U.K.) as an eBook on Kindle through Amazon here.


Mr. Figs

Mr. Figs has jelly on his hands in her dreams. He swells up with real pep when he strums his guitar. He has love for pale beer, and his favorite brand of humor is the same as hers. He likes Oolong tea. Can peel the toughest skin from her heart.

Mr. Figs protects his name, doesn't giggle, and doesn't chafe where she does, watches while she looks away and her face reddens like wine.

Mr. Figs tells her about his dog, how the dog is more than enough pets, because he sleeps little and irregularly. She’s not happy about her practical footwear, but Mr. Figs does not mind her thick-assed socks, in fact he can’t see them and has never asked to see her feet.

Also, he has recently been to the doctor who cleared him of fatal ills.

Mr. Figs has a trick and the trick is becoming Mr. Figs. A phantom here on this earth. Like her, he doesn’t read the newspaper—or if he does, says absolutely nothing about the real horrible things that happen.



This Lexia & Other Languages -- Helen Kay -- 17 July 2020

“In these poems about the relationship between a mother and son, about dyslexia and language itself (‘the dangling hooks of “f”s and “t”s’), Helen Kay forges an idiom which is both tender and firm. Kay draws us into the experience of living in a society shaped around neurotypical expectations. The poems that result are angry and searching. But in feeling out the boundaries of language, they achieve a ‘seedling syntax’ which is alive and beautiful.” Will Harris

“These poems are quicksilver – deft, concise, witty and full of fresh ways of saying things.  With empathy, and sometimes anger, they skilfully lead the reader into a world of words that confounds expectation but contains its own very specific delights.” Judy Brown

“We are told ‘all shapes are made to fit’, but sometimes the world has a preordained notion of ‘shape’ that does not include people with dyslexia. In Helen Kay’s latest publication, she reflects on a ‘mother-son bond’, as they navigate a childhood where dyslexic can mean being ‘labelled “slow’’’. This Lexia & Other Languages will awaken you to their world, to ‘hear it, taste it, feel it’ in all its devastating complexity.” Elisabeth Sennitt Clough

This Lexia & Other Languages is very genuine and very human.

A sample poem from this pamphlet  can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for This Lexia & Other Languages can be found here.



Short Term Memory Loss

It starts with an        empty tight-lipped jug
or a foggy eviction        from my narrative.
Familiar names are        clinging to my tongue
I lose my spectacles        and wash my purse.
A slush of turnips        blackens in a pan.

Others fear dementia.        I was born misplacing
mid-stairs, purpose        waves goodbye. I float.
Quiz time. I parrot        an answer, claim its mine.
At night I lie awake        to rescue hunches
that it started with a ‘P’        or was it ‘K’?

Next day fills        with Mrs Malaprop
whotsit pen drives        brillig crib sheets.
Only the key things        cross the neural pathway:
the days that leaked        the saltiness of now
the dregs of pain        the scent of being loved.



Hierarchy of Needs -- Charley Barnes & Claire Walker -- 3 August 2020

Hierarchy of Needs A Retelling is a collaborative pamphlet of poems by Charley Barnes and Claire Walker.

“This pamphlet is a reminder of the extraordinary paradoxes and dualities cultivated between the shaky coexistence of the natural world within the Anthropocene. We are drawn into other-worldly ecologies populated by ‘giddy’ ‘warriors’ ‘fenced in (for freedom)’ and ‘giants, balancing on toes’; yet also confronted with the harsh and tangible realities that confirm the mortal fragility of our environments, even those we create for ourselves through technology.  There is adept writing skill evident in these poems: fresh anthropomorphic voices propagate amongst lyrical lines that converge with direct, demanding declaratives; violent vivid images give way to mellow half-rhymes and assonance; form is executed with precision and also reworked into affecting challenge and experiment. Here lies the adroitness of a pamphlet that moves like rhizomes – with purpose, poise and intelligence.

“Re-working nature’s contradictions and vulnerabilities, and ultimately its needs and desires with this resolute energy, offers a striking parallel: as women writers we might be seen, but not always heard. For me then, this pamphlet is more than just an excellent example of eco-poetry; it is a sophisticated and spirited example of eco-feminism. This is a Mother Earth who nurtures, protects, provides but is also ‘bounty hunter’ with unmistakable, fierce needs of her own: unapologetically pursued and satisfied. ‘Something beautiful’.”
Katy Wareham Morris

“We do not exist without nature, though more and more these days, we seem to be expected to. In this book, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is used as a narrative to consider the entwining of both nature’s and our own human needs. The book is split into two sections, each headed with its own recreations of the original five-layered hierarchical pyramid. They feel like a catechism – questions that we must keep on asking ourselves.

“The poems are each beautiful and spared from unnecessary clutter – there is such gentleness and consideration to be gained from the reading. Nature is personified and within the poems there is an aching, a longing to be freed from our human bonds – to be able to answer the age-old call of the seasons without our interference.

“Some of the poems writhe with wonderful touches of the fairy tale. Some express nature’s desire to work in harmony with us as it did in days long past. Some stand in stark contrast to our modern, technology reliant world. Some convey a sense of eternal searching, of pain and grief. Some are piquant with our own bodies, loves, families and deaths. Under the current circumstances and the strange times we are living through, this really does feel like a needed book. We could all do with being a bit more tree.”
Jane Burn

Hierarchy of Needs is very structured, very inquisitive.

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Hierarchy of Needs A Retelling  can be found here.



For Agatha, who loved this place

I wake slow, see no need to rush,
in this, my centenary year.
I’ve earned this slowness,
have honed the art
of observation since I took root:
planted For Agatha, who loved this place.

My own potential realised,
I know all seasons of people,
have taken their stories down
and filled their lungs in return.

Mothers push their babies around
and I shade their tired eyes,
wish them unbroken sleep tonight.

Children come and go – grow –
race around my sturdy trunk,
build dens inside the hollow of my heart.
They weave up my branches, so light
I shoulder them so they might stretch
towards the sun.

I have seen whole family trees expand.
Generations of the same tribe
picnic together at my feet.
At times, this warms me
more than a summer day:
generations gabbling, together, alive.

Here, I witness life,
snap a twig of hair and carve a quill,
scribe everything into my parchment
to pass on. Collecting roots, truths to tell,
for Agatha, who loved this place.


Making Tracks -- Katy Wareham Morris -- 10 September 2020

“From the very first page of this pamphlet, the reader encounters a voice which is entirely new. Within this pamphlet we find interrogations of masculinity, class, manual labour, what is and isn’t inherited through different generations and, most excitingly, see how these different preoccupations can be refracted and reflected through language and the line.

"As there should be when searching for new ways to contemplate tradition, a fresh type of experimentation with language, its spacial arrangement and its breath, is given to the reader, but always with a solid and concrete centre of people and place. A balance is struck between the heart, and the search for a language, scientific or natural, which might be able to fully represent it. Poems such as ‘You and Him: A Venn Diagram’ give us a visual language for exploring the pamphlet’s themes, and the pamphlet as a whole brings together the insertion of the urban and natural, the historical and the contemporary. An exciting new pamphlet from a poet doing important new things with the art.”
Andrew McMillan

Making Tracks uses the texture of language and collaged fragments to celebrate those people who worked at the now defunct Longbridge car factory.  Wareham Morris’s father is the beating heart at the centre of these poems, it’s whose voice we hear, entrusted to her tender keeping.  There is the melancholy of a way of life gone here, but also the love of a day’s work and the satisfaction of a job well done.”
Helen Ivory

By design, Making Tracks is very dutiful, yet very fallible.

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Making Tracks can be found here.

Metamorphosis

You were ruled by the track that sliced through the factory,
that carved the operating chaos of your life,
me too, by the blood in my arms –
the cartographic lines drawn in the grass laid before me

to keep it moving, to keep them and us alive.
Hundreds of transposable parts simultaneously
dropping into place like dancers, with your eyes
shut counting beats, the rhythm in your fast feet
recognised the tools, the bodies, the faces
jacked up the day new West Works opened,
when shells swam with robots then sailed
over the Bristol Road. Each day before and after
mechanised, standardised, but you the one-off,
driving from one heart, one hearth to another.
Daily, nightly dangers posed by predictable
assembly sequence, lines forced to refine,
whilst you designed me first, yet my parts
still coming together, directions in motion,
crafting the chaos of the steadfast home that would work us,
and the men who remained unchanged for years,
the production line that had produced you before.

It never stopped – your brain like my brain
loudly crashing to the beat of your fast feet
dancing on my heart, growing from the middle,
multiplicities dropping into additional software
for brand new computers, your quick hands
finished processes same place, same time, every time.
The machine making machines work.
That conveyor bridge demolished first.


Blue Dot Aubade -- Miranda Lynn Barnes -- 10 October 2020

“I don’t think poems need to teach anything but nevertheless there's much to learn about the cosmos, the spirit, matter, and what matters here. The best part is that the lessons are delivered by a high-energy beam of surprising, hyper-attentive language. I'm obsessed with light, as are these poems. Ultimately, the language is the lesson – it's how the poems see and they may affect your vision afterwards.
 
Light travels as waves
and arrives as particles.

We travel as bodies
and arrive as light.

(From 'Cheating Light')”

Simon Barraclough
 
“Miranda Lynn Barnes' Blue Dot Aubade uses astrophysics and human experience as lenses for one another and thereby creates a renewed appreciation of both. At times playful, at times poignant, these intelligent poems illuminate our environment in the broadest sense: they give us a new view of our universe and our relationship to it. An engaging, original debut.” V. Press Guest Editor Carrie Etter

Blue Dot Aubade is very cosmic, and very numinous.

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Blue Dot Aubade can be found here.


Olivine

She’s been found
on meteorites, the dust

on Mars, tails of comets,
and the natal discs

of forming stars. Her crystal
green has been seen

in early solar birth
and the magma ocean

of the moon as it cooled.
She sparkles in every arc,

every glint against the ink
of the sky.

You are the greenest twinkle
in my eye, Olivine.


Friday, 20 June 2025

Launching Dreaming Backward

 


 

“Who would have thought forty-nine short pieces about Butlin’s holiday camps could be so touching? A kaleidoscopic look at the past, Dreaming Backward is an enchantment – together all the vivid, intense parts create strange patterns, catching the light of memory. Reading it, reality shifts and we are taken by surprise, travelling in time, nearer the tumble and drift where we forget we live.”
Linda France

“In this exhilarating poetic documentary, Alex Reed transports us to the ‘brightly hued reality’ of Butlin’s holiday camps with the All-Star Redcoats’ Show and the Lovely Legs competition. Dreaming Backward is a compelling social history of a pre-digital era. But it is also a musing on perceptions of time, how we choose to fill our leisure hours, and how that might be judged by others. In its playful hybrid form, reminiscent of the Japanese zuihitsu tradition, incorporating myriad sources and using fragments, collage techniques, and occasional tracts of white space that provide interpretative space for the reader, Reed’s movement on the page echoes the shifting, fragmented nature of memory. This startling mosaic of 49 passages numbered backwards will leave you interrogating your personal history – choices not taken, lives that might have been, and decisions yet to be played out.” Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana

Dreaming Backward is very evocative and very resonant.

ISBN: 978-1-7394122-7-2
36 pages
R.R.P. £7.50

A sample from Dreaming Backward can be enjoyed below.

BUY Dreaming Backward NOW using the paypal options below. 

Dreaming Backward
(with p&p options)
N.B. We can no longer sell to the EU. Any other international customs/duty charges are the buyer's responsibility.

11.

When we got home, I came down with a bug which kept me off school for the rest of the week. Lying in bed sweating and woozy, transistor radio on the pillow beside me, yearning to catch the song they’d played at the disco, ‘Behind a Painted Smile’, with its stately flute intro before the drums crash into action commanding your body to pay attention, then the rush and release of that soaring chorus, half-euphoria, half-desperation, the loveliest sound I’d ever heard piercing my restless, hormonal heart.

Thursday, 12 June 2025

10 Years of Publication -- 2019

 



2025 marks ten years of V. Press publishing solo-authored titles and, as part of our celebrations, we're sharing our year-by-year publications over that period.

The press was originally launched at Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2013 with a one-off poetry chapbook anthology before moving on to solo-authored poetry pamphlets in 2015.

Our first solo-authored poetry collection and our first flash fiction pamphlet came out in 2016. There have been illustrated poetry pamphlets, a dual-authored poetry pamphlet and a full-length flash fiction title along the way.

Today, we highlight our 2019 titles and celebrate an extra delight from that year!

Michael Loveday's novella-in-flash Three Men on the Edge shortlisted for Saboteur Awards 2019 Best Novella!

On the subject of flash fiction, this Saturday is also National Flash Fiction Day in the UK. You can find out more about some of the day's celebrations here.


Making Waves -- Martin Zarrop -- 18 January 2019

Making Waves Albert Einstein: Science & Life is a pamphlet of poems by Martin Zarrop.

“Don't be put off by the Physics! This poetic study of Einstein's life and work is deeply informed but also witty, varied and often moving. ‘Don't feel sorry for me. / There must be certainty in the world’ Einstein says here, but as he faces the travails of certainty Martin Zarrop ensures that we do.” Jeffrey Wainwright


“Martin Zarrop's latest pamphlet Making Waves takes a look at the life and times of Albert Einstein and the lives of those he has influenced and touches. The poems here skilfully encapsulate different aspects of Einstein's life, from his work and theories and their aftermath to touching poems about his private life, the woman he married and the child he lost. The writing finds Zarrop on top form, witty and wry, and with a keen eye for details, able to paint an overall picture while still having time to see ‘somewhere between here / and the nearest star: / a single hair - / now found’. Enjoy this wonderful collection of poems.” David Tait 

Making Waves Albert Einstein: Science & Life portrays the life and times of a genius with poems that are very passionate and very human.

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for 
Making Waves Albert Einstein: Science & Life can be found here.


Celebrity

Albert Einstein 1879–1955

When I looked in the mirror, I saw him,
that warm smile below a halo of hair,
the intensity in his brown eyes.
It’s you, I said
but he shook his head with a No,
not me, I’d rather be YOU,
in that strong German accent
I remember from old newsreels.

After that, I became well-known
as an after-dinner speaker
on relativity and gravitation,
reality and the quantum,
philosophy and politics
and how to act disgracefully
with any number of women
who hero-worshipped me.

So much affection, so little time
to decipher the thoughts of God.
In the end they checked my birth certificate,
charged me with Impersonating A Physicist.
The scientists of the world were appalled;
they always claimed I was a mathematician
or, even worse, a kind of philosopher.


The Escapologist -- Jinny Fisher -- 6 February 2019


“These poems, sometimes joyful and sometimes sinister, examine human connection and disconnection. Time traveling between a subjective past and a forgiving present, Jinny Fisher is like the little boy ‘escapologist’ in the title poem: proficient in her craft, and simultaneously tethered and free.” Kathryn Maris


“Jinny Fisher’s poems explore the often fraught intimacies of family life with psychological acuteness and linguistic precision. At times hauntingly stark, at others delightfully whimsical, Fisher’s work is consistently engaged, intelligent, and necessary.” Carrie Etter

“As the title of this pamphlet suggests, Fisher’s poetry dazzles with its play between restraint and release, form and space. These poems resonate with love, loss, mystery and fable and just as you think ‘the ropes will slip free’, a new theme, a different landscape, a fresh voice transmutes into being.” 
V. Press Guest Editor Mary-Jane Holmes

The Escapologist is very taut and very disquieting.

A sample poem from this pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for The Escapologist can be found here.


Retrofocus


Brownie 127: The Beach.

As we skimmed the deeps, his freckled back was my boat. I felt the rise and fall of shoulder blades under my thumbs, his mouth swivelling into view as he gasped for breath. Look: a squinty grin, a cartwheel, a sandcastle – fortified against the tide. 

Asahi Pentax: The Shed.


Dust-coated cobwebs, thick as tea towels, draped the windows. I dangled my legs from the workbench, viced the battens while he sawed, and there were so many splinters to be gouged. Look: a table – sanded and glossed, a captain’s chair, three splay-backs. 


Nikon F: The Studio.


A windowless shed at the end of the garden. Only my friend was with him. We all knew there were cameras on tripods, banks of flash-guns, umbrellas to diffuse the glare. I imagine his camouflaged murmurs as her blouse falls to the floor. Listen: Lovely – peep from under your lids. Now – a little smile. 


Midnight Laughter -- Paul McDonald -- 21 February 2019

The short fiction in Midnight Laughter is very funny and very unsettling…

“These are fantastic, absurd, coruscating, disturbing and laugh-out-loud funny gobbets of communication from journeys into that bizarre realm between dream and reality. Brilliant testaments to the power of the human imagination and the mad computer of the brain, each of these little detonations of alluring oddness make the world seem simultaneously stranger and sounder than it is. Superb stuff.” Niall Griffiths

“I absolutely loved Midnight Laughter and will be pressing it upon everyone I know. These are precision cut gems of stories – little shards of darkness, pathos, unexpected tenderness and wicked humour. A beautifully crafted collection.” Catherine O’Flynn

A sample flash from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Midnight Laughter can be found here.


Short Story

One morning at breakfast Pete was a foot shorter than he’d been the night before. His PJs tripped him up as he shuffled through the kitchen. “Watch out Mr Clumsy,” said his wife. He ate his kippers as she talked about the day she had in store; should she purchase him some platforms from the shops?

Next morning he was two feet shorter still, his nose scarcely level with the kitchen counter. He struggled with his kippers, the size of barracuda on his plate. “Eat up,” said his wife, who pinched his cheeks between her fingers, “You’re getting cuter by the day!”

Next morning he was less than two feet tall and wore her blouse as a dressing gown. She spent some time ruffling-up his hair, sat him in a highchair, and flew him flakes of kipper on an aeroplane fork: “My darling Petie Weetie!”

Next morning he was half the size again, and she calmed him with a dummy dunked in kipper juice and spit…

Time shrank. He couldn’t tell how long it was before he was so tiny he could fit inside a capsule, its headache powder contents tapped-out on the draining board ready for his fingernail frame. The trip down her gullet made him squeal, the sound of which diminished to a dot. If you’ve ever wondered what a dot would sound like. It sounds like that.



Checkout -- Kathy Gee -- 1 March 2019


Checkout is a sequence of character portraits and vignettes based on the ephemeral characters that cross a corner shop’s bell-chiming threshold. Told from every side of the social spectrum, this is a play for voices, voices in verses, a cross between Under Milk Wood and Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. This is a bold and brave collection from the distinctive voice of Kathy Gee.”  Rhian Edwards

“In a time where high street shops are declining or under threat, Checkout is a timely ode, set in Middle England with a ‘cadenced heart,/ alert to daily rhythms, oiled/ by traffic, chips and friends.’ We can add dogs and peregrine to the series of vignettes of everyday people, caught with a keen ear, passionate not to lose the nuances of a century’s old tradition. These voices are guided by a young narrator, who serves and observes; someone who is on her own odyssey that ventures around the world without moving out of the confines of the cash desk. As people make their daily pilgrimage to this local shop, there are elements of Canterbury Tales and Bukowski flowing through this brave collection.” Roy Mcfarlane

As confident as sugar lumps in Yorkshire Tea, Checkout is very immersive, very real.

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Checkout can be found here.


Pembe:  Snow in Istanbul     

Four flights of stairs to a wooden loft.
I flicked false triumph from my paintbrush,
spattered anger over canvas
stretched out on the lime-white floor.
Beneath the frozen sky, I argued,
cut through dead-end debts and lies,
spread ink blots on his frogspawn heart.
     A second canvas, white and square,
was laid out like the first, but turned
so every corner pointed at a wall.
I stretched up to the skylight, bent
to fling fresh paint at what comes next.
The brilliant colours furled and landed
where new stories said they must.
              The day the sun broke through, I tried
to sell the pictures of my life
to a dealer from the Grand Bazaar.
Enticed by promises of tea,
he climbed the stairs to my attic room
and tried to buy the snow-white, star-shaped
space, revealed, uncovered on the floor.


The boy who couldn't say his name -- John Lawrence -- 31 March 2019


“John Lawrence’s The boy who couldn’t say his name is a joy to read, a book of poems packed with heart, humour and a unique slant on everyday life. The collection is underpinned but not dominated by the story behind the title, the painful experiences he endured as a child, and his wicked imagination shines through.”
Heather Wastie

“These poems manage the almost impossible feat of being understated yet vivid. In this collection John Lawrence takes us through a landscape of narratives where we can feel life: its little triumphs, its wounds, its quirkiness, its sadness, and its joy. He is also a skilful humourist and it’s a delight to find several poems which showcase his impressive comedic talents. It is a perfect irony that a boy who grew up unable to say his name became a poet with such a compelling and wonderful voice.” Fergus McGonigal

The boy who couldn’t say his name is very empathetic and very entertaining.


A sample poem from the full-length collection can be found below. More information and ordering for The boy who couldn’t say his name can be found here.


Den, Sole Occupancy

I built a den in the living room, just for me.
Minimalist design, mainly blankets and sheets
draped over curtain poles and a golf club.

In the glimmer of a fading Maglite
it’s the echoless drear of autumn in here,
not enough room for a solitary tango
or a quick-fire round of celebrity charades.

I lie on my back, feeling weightless,
stare at the astral alignment of the buttons on her coat,
which doubles as the makeshift door. Now
on with the headphones, so the noise is less black.
Invent a new game – count the buttons on the coat.
See a new something – one blonde hair,
caught in the thread of the button at the end.
Create a new plan – build a den within a den,
then another, and another, and another,
until the last is as small as a jackdaw’s egg.

I’d invite you in, I could unhitch the coat
from the golf club. But we’d only mess it up.



The Neverlands  -- Damhnait Monaghan -- 8 April 2019

The Neverlands, a virtuoso mosaic of microfictions by Damhnait Monaghan, tells the story of Nuala, a child caught in the crossfire of her parents' troubled marriage. This is a family epic in flash form, masterfully and movingly distilled, both devastating and hopeful. A gorgeous debut.” Kathy Fish


The Neverlands is a heart-tugger of a collection. In pitch-perfect colloquial prose, Damhnait Monaghan waltzes us through the sorrows of a poverty-stricken Irish family, who struggle to love each other well. Funny, clever, warm and sad, this is a beautiful book.” Nuala O’Connor

The interconnected stories in The Neverlands are very raw and very real.

WINNER of SABOTEUR AWARDS 2020 BEST NOVELLA!


A sample flash from the pamphlet can be read below. More information for The Neverlands  can be found here.

CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK IN PRINT FORMAT BUT AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK IN THE U.K. AND INTERNATIONALLY ON KINDLE through Amazon, including Amazon.co.uk here and Amazon.com here.

Nuala: Dutch Courage


Da staggers up to the school gates at morning break and calls for Nuala. Her stomach is bubbling but she goes over and looks at him through the fence. He smiles and there’s more teeth gone. When he says he’s proud of his Nuala, she pinches her wrist hard so she doesn’t cry. Why does he have to be drunk to say anything good? Sister Angelique comes to lead her away and says it’s Dutch courage. Nuala says she doesn’t know much about Holland and Sister Angelique says actually it’s the Neverlands. And Nuala thinks that sounds about right.


The Protection of Ghosts -- Natalie Linh Bolderston -- 23 April 2019

The Protection of Ghosts shows how our past can equally haunt and protect us. Here are lyrical poems about intergenerational trauma, familial exile, loss, cultural legacy and hope. In ‘Operation Ranch Hand’, Natalie Linh Bolderston explores how the damage caused by chemical warfare materialises and continues to the present time when a woman ‘does not know about the scar / that is forming inside, that her daughter / will be born wordless on a stretcher.’ The themes of separation and pain are beautifully laced in ‘My mother’s nightmares’ where ‘my mother reaches, / …and I do not know whether I am rising or she is / falling – ’, while a sense of belonging is discovered from the stories passed down to us: ‘…we grew a lot of fruit and greens on the roof. / Always eat with chilli and salt. You try!’ (‘When Bà Ngoại tells stories’). Natalie Linh Bolderston is definitely a distinct and daring voice you would not want to miss.” Romalyn Ante

“In her first pamphlet, Natalie Linh Bolderston portrays the knowledge and care shared among generations of women in poems at once sensory and tender, vivid and emotive. The Protection of Ghosts is a most welcome debut.” V. Press Guest Editor Carrie Etter

The Protection of Ghosts is very haunting and very intricate.

This title is now out of print but more information about The Protection of Ghosts can be found here.


Mingled Space -- Margaret Adkins -- 30 April 2019


“These poems are controlled, beautiful and strange, always with a woman’s way of seeing; ‘a hungry vixen barked and waltzed/ with shadows’. Here is music and witchcraft and sometimes things moving backwards. Here is the marvellous musical relationship of one word to another, as Adkins’ gaze shines a light into dark corners, noticing the small, the left behind and the lovely.”
Deborah Alma

“These musical poems bristle with tenderness and beauty. Folklore and myth mysteriously evoked in the sumptuous sweep of language, domestic spaces inhabited by vivid characters leap out at you alive with a kind of gentle danger. Beneath this vivid tapestry of poems there is an echo of poignancy, threaded and pure, delivering a wonderful and haunting debut collection.” Roz Goddard

“In Mingled Space, Margaret Adkins articulates the concerns of intimacy and how relationships are played out in set spaces, both interior and exterior, and the negotiations people make in those spaces. There is always a keen focus on the capacity to be creative in everyday places; Adkins gives attention to tender details others might miss.” V. Press Guest Editor Ruth Stacey

Mingled Space is very redolent and very melodic.

WINNER OF THE INAUGURAL V. PRESS PRIZE FOR POETRY!!!

A sample poem from this pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Mingled Space can be found here.


The Dividing Line

Born and raised along the hypotenuse
of the estate, his house faced the track.

Mind you don’t go off with anyone, Sid
his mother used to shout. He didn’t.

They lived on the other side of the bridge
in houses with the television switched off

in the daytime. And where candled air
drifted when her leadlight-door opened

and shut after her mother said:
she isn’t playing out today.

*

Not until he was fifteen
did a vanilla-scented girl come knocking

with her bowl of salt.
And just like a bowl made of salt

bones in his head sunk clarets and corals
released on her tongue. He

didn’t understand when one day
she whispered: Sid, nothing stays the same.

*

He knew that it did. It does. The rails hum
where he stands – chalked and whet in oily-oranged puddles.


Heroines -- Becky Varley-Winter -- 7 May 2019

“My favourite way to read these poems – and there are many – is to pay attention to what the light is doing.  In Varley-Winter’s hands, it’s always up to something interesting: filling a glass or a pear, say, or reviving the dead. It emanates from spectres or screens, and makes cameos in grease or chrome or crystal. It makes alterations: horns and feathers come and go; myth invades a city park; love arrives in a deluge. Here’s a gifted technician at work, and you feel the scope of her gift most sharply when she pulls into abrupt focus on intricate forms (shell, moth, burr), or in a gorgeous turn. The total effect is something like a series of mirrors tilted slightly off their planes: a vitreous gallery of rich, uncanny poems, crisscrossed with slant perspectives.” Abigail Parry

Heroines is about the everyday in the fantastical – bored damsels, witches living on cliff edges, and the Lady of Shallot scrolling through unsolicited ‘sword pics’ – but the fantastical is also in the everyday, and some of my favourites here are Rebecca’s incredibly tender and expansive poems on heartbreak, love and loss. With influences ranging from Apollinaire to Audre Lorde, Heroines is a great debut from this young poet, a gentle network of strong characters.” Alex MacDonald

Heroines: On the Blue Peninsula is very vibrant and very tender.

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Heroines: On the Blue Peninsula can be found here.


The Lover

Morning a warm hand on her spine
she watches him by the flooded river
thick with crucial information
such as: he loves her
and it must be clandestine.
It must be against the rules
to love someone and be loved back,
there’s no story, oh no, the king or someone
opposes their union. This can’t happen.
Huge owls stare her down
and herds of camels trail past him into the house
but he’s untroubled by them.
She yells HOW DID ALL THESE CAMELS
GET IN HERE? I DIDN’T PLAN THIS
as he smiles and leads them away
with such kindness.
There’s a nestling pit
at the base of her ribs, it’s really terrible,
she can’t keep still, lying in the longest grass
hardly daring to look at him, her hands fidgeting
as his eyes soak in the smallest traces of her mind
where even the worst mud is touched and sinks
into the strata of time
where it will never fully recover.


John Dust -- Louise Warren -- 7 September 2019

John Dust features poems by Louise Warren, with illustrations by John Duffin.

Louise Warren uses grief as an artist uses a sharpened pencil to delicately illustrate that what we leave, we inevitably return to whether through memories or myth.  Nature and Death are dancing partners in this beautifully moving collection of poems which explore the idea of roots in family and place. An earthy reverence combined with the keenest observation brings Somerset alive from the ashes of the past. Here, we find apples, owls, folklore, riddles, hedgerows, all linked by the character of John Dust, who is so much more than mere mortality: “I will be your Silhouette, your Diplomat, your Compass” (‘Swifts’). Indeed, the footnote lets us know that these are all caravans. We are in sympathetic imaginative territory to Jacob Polley’s award-winning Jackself where the reader is engaged and often lulled, only to be taken by surprise. It could be argued this how the process of bereavement works – you think you have arrived at a certain point, only to be off-balanced, but the sense of re-discovery of something lost in these poems, is a joyous reclamation. Many of the poems have found recognition in poetry competitions, but this is more than a collection of standout poems; it is the whole that makes it remarkable. The pamphlet is also illustrated with fine drawings by the artist, John Duffin, which match Warren’s words with their deft yet delicate strokes and serve to highlight the wistful strength of this collection.” Lisa Kelly

“Riddles and rhythms weave the wonderful spell of John Dust – Louise Warren's original Somerset legend is a brilliant feat of imagination, and will leave you wanting more stories of this mythical man and his exquisitely off-kilter world.” Kate Garrett

Like a character from a contemporary Somerset folktale,  John Dust is very atmospheric and very bewitching.

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information, a sample illustration and ordering for John Dust can be found here.


The Marshes

In the barn, my sofa stands in its puff of white breath,
heavy, patient, packed in tight with the herd,
waiting. I wait for it.

Downstairs, the afternoon moves heavily around the house,
a washing line turns slowly on its stalk,
the carpet in the hallway runs a sluggish ditch.

Back then, before they built on it, back then
the path stumped short into nettles, just fields,
arm of the sky bent round, empty.

Empty as pockets, empty as churches,
empty as milk pails rusting on gateposts.
I look out the windows milky with flat screens,

empty as ditches,
cold in the kitchen, biting like nettles,
sheeny as hoar frost.

Deep inside the bathroom I undress myself for you,
John Dust.
Down to the sedge and water, down to the beak of me,

sharp in the reed bed, down to the hidden.
I strip the light from my skin until I am overcast,
become cloud cover.

John Dust.
My man under the motorway,
flat out in the dark fields, seeding the hedges,

scratching your chest hair, wispy as larches,
pinking like evening, stitchwort and abattoir, bloody as Sedgemoor,
lipped up with cider, scraggy as winter.

You fetch each room, one by one, back to the marshes.
Plant forks and teaspoons, chairs for the heron’s nest,
propped up and broken,

the sky rusting over, smashed up with egg yolks,
water as mirror, water as leather, water as smoke, as trick,
a light under the door.

I stand in the empty
waiting for nothing.
Birds in the buckthorn, a house full of berries.


The Aesthetics of Breath -- Charles G Lauder Jr -- 14 October 2019


“There’s an enviable gusto and assurance about this debut, the confident voicing of a distinctive sensibility that deserves our attention. Lauder has a keen ear for the musical and metrical possibilities of the well-wrought line which well serves his deftly rendered lyric style. Particularly impressive are the domestic sequences and longer poems which hold both interest and momentum throughout: an achievement of poetic coherence and craft that can only be accomplished by a poet more than ready to stake a claim for his place on the contemporary scene.” Martin Malone

“In his debut collection, Charles G. Lauder is not afraid to delve beneath the surface of white masculinites, unearthing violence and toughness but vulnerability and tenderness also. This means examining his own past in the US; what he has inherited, what he brings to his life in England, and what he finds there. Again and again, poems reveal that his family is his lodestone: ‘We are our elements. I would be lost/without them.’ The Aesthetics of Breath is a rich and varied collection which has love and social justice at its heart but does not turn aside from uncomfortable truths.” Pam Thompson

The Aesthetics of Breath is NOT a breath of fresh air – it is a deep breathing-in of a gas called ‘history’, so that it hurts in the lungs. Be they personal myths or legends of entire nations’ violence, here the vapours of various histories sublimate into Lauder’s vivid solidifications – poems that render the distance and otherness of places and times as touchable and smelt. Some of these poems are ‘stellar gases congealing into orbits’, and they are celebratory confirmations of essential stories we humans need to tell our selves. But be warned: some of these poems cast ‘Hiroshima shadow[s]’ to exorcise our civilisation’s pale myths, its ghosts that too often comfortably haunt us, and our too easy and shallow breaths of memes. At times this book is like opening a grave to find the buried still alive ... and violently gasping out accounts of ‘the ruling passions of the woods’.” Mark Goodwin  

The Aesthetics of Breath is very personal, yet very eternal.

A sample poem from this full-length collection can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for The Aesthetics of Breath can be found here.


Milton-on-the-Hill

And the man spied on the bridal path,
shimmering, vaporous, slow in gait
like a predator through grass, is black.
Parents waiting at the school gate
ask, Does he wear a backpack?

Our village is tasked with isolation
like an open wound wary of infection.
A Jamaican lived here for a season,
drank in the pub with his white wife’s son.
Are you visiting? we asked.

Our childminder is on the back lane
when the man falls in step, asks her name.
He is a carer for a chronic smoker
in Norden Heath. Going for a walk
is the only way he can breathe.


Cuckoo -- Nichola Deane -- 28 October 2019


“Nichola Deane’s rich and sensuous poems may open with a plainspoken line or a recognisable surface, but they dwell only briefly in the familiar actual. Her syntax and image-making – both equally bold – bring the world to us in new and compelling guises. These are poems of darkness and delight – alive to sensation and feeling, and open to the urgency of beauty.” Katharine Towers

“Nichola Deane’s imagination has a long reach that pulls the unexpected into line after line. The language, clear yet idiosyncratic, and Deane’s deft touch give these poems ease, lightness and confidence.” Fiona Moore

Cuckoo is very sensory and very spacious.

A sample poem from this full-length collection can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Cuckoo can be found here.

D Day

to my maternal grandmother, B.E.H., i.m.

i.

You tell them then because our planes are flying over everyone
and have been since dawn when the engines woke you

because their drone note, its guttural swarm
hums through your bones and the sky has invaded your ear

because even these friendly squadrons
seem to have you in their sights

because a plague of angels is over you
death-birds you will see with closed eyes

like eye-flaws or black wizened tears
years afterwards

because these Angels of Vitreous Dust
have shocked from you a blast-wave of grief, a Jericho

as you say out loud
to your parents’ tightening draining faces

all you can smuggle past your shame and your self
to reach the lips of the story

hoping they won’t do
what you know they’ll do when you tell them

(haven’t you already packed your valise
in the dawn-light–spare underthings wrapped round

your shrinking childhood, your foreboding?)
You tell them because you, more than many

know at seventeen what soldiers do
and because you don’t need a Bible to tell you

you and your small passenger
will both be half-Job, half-Eve in this world


ii.

Seven months of knowledge
hidden under ever-looser clothing

seven months of my mother
within you, my secret mother, my mother your

grief, my mother the love
no mother mothered when you could not keep her

until I kept the secret of her
for her safe within me, until

I woke to the sound
of the Lancasters, Spitfires and Mustangs

within her and dawn-until-midnight
mother-grief, like that longest of all days



Patience -- Nina Lewis -- 14 November 2019


Patience opens with a watch being dissected, laid bare on a table with the delicacy and patience of a dedicated craftsman. This collection is a reverence to time and where memories lie in places, objects, a lover’s touch, shipping forecast or in a mother counting for days. Nina Lewis is deft and sensitive in speaking of grief and loss, of love and desire, of caring for the elderly. Her words and phrases are weighted with a lightness of touch, capturing golden moments with a watchmaker’s accuracy. She is determined to create a living record, to have the last say in the presence of illness and death, leaving us with codes for the broken and an encouragement ‘to learn the art of waiting’.” Roy McFarlane

 “The poems in Patience address problems of the human condition with a subtleness in technique, a gentleness in approach and a fresh outlook that avoids the cliché or overstatement such poetic themes can sometimes acquire; these poems are beautifully balanced, carefully crafted and the emotional content is all the more powerful because it is so well weighed. Some of these poems subtly convey the sense of a physical loss, others explore the trials of separation and the difficult adjustment in relationships. Grief is expressed but they also remind us of the power of human connection. Joy is held in our memories; in ‘Signs’, there is ‘the glow of orange even in dark beginnings’. These poems touch deeply and yet maintain a calm and measured face. Nina Lewis holds in her hands cogs of isolation, grief and loss moving along the wheels of love, of hope and of patience.” Julie Boden

Patience is very intimate and very fond.

A sample poem from this pamphlet  can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Patience can be found here.


The Dark House

It started life as a home,
until the red bricks,
colour of rust, were abandoned.

The empty house
bore the brunt of nature;
tilted slates let water in.

It became a habitat
for shadow animals,
nocturnal kings.

At night, the edges of its frame
were accentuated by bypass lights:
silhouette house, secret of wild hedge.

The road beyond the garden
never stopped.

In sleep I walk the dark house,
enter the ash kitchen,
feel my way across charcoal tiles,

my paper feet never find the rooms,
never make it to the stairs.
I awake to light

spinning my darkened dreams.


I keep my eyes closed,
until only blue remains.


About Leaving -- Ian Glass -- 28 November 2019


“Ian Glass writes compellingly and beautifully about real life, with all its knots and twists and unexpected turns. He has an instinctive feel for a poem’s texture, its grain and the planed faces as well at what lies beneath the veneer, and has the measure of how the ordinary transforms itself through finding shape in language. These poems are clear, tender, often moving – but do not assume that they lack heft in their gentleness of approach. As Glass himself notes in the closing poem, ‘all that will remain is light’ – these poems are not afraid to throw their beam of searchlight clarity and bring intense experiences of loss and recovery into focus.”
Jane Commane

“I found these remarkable poems intensely moving. They chart a process of huge loss and the road to recovery. Each individual poem is a small gem and the writing is so beautifully controlled that what I took from the collection in the end was a sense of hope. A really strong first collection. I loved it.”
Carole Bromley

About Leaving is very quiet and very precise.

A sample poem from this pamphlet may be found below. More information and ordering for About Leaving can be found here.



The Day You Left 

Walking from one empty room
to another, filled with silence

after the harsh clatter
of diesel and last words,

and dust drifting in circles,
sunlit, but always falling.

With the clock ticking towards home-time.

With the sofa you chose
moved to where I had wanted it.

Somewhere between making a cup of tea
and finding your pencilled note:

bras should be hand-washed

is where the falling stopped,
is where I started.