Friday, 8 August 2025

10 Years of Publications -- 2021




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 2021 titles!


Something so wild and new in this feeling -- Sarah Doyle -- 2 March 2021

 
“In these inventive and adventurous collage poems, Sarah Doyle presents Dorothy Wordsworth’s exuberant feeling for life and language in a fresh fabric of her own making. Sympathetic and insightful, tactful, and imaginative, Doyle’s compositions refract the energies of Dorothy’s writings through the subtle medium of her own sensibility, and the result is at once daring and illuminating.” Gregory Leadbetter
 
“In Something so wild and new in this feeling, Sarah Doyle has taken Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals and developed excerpts into poems, finding felicities of phrasing, musicality, and ideas. Doyle’s skills in pacing, use of the line, and the possibilities of form help us appreciate anew Wordsworth’s habits of thought and close attention to the natural world. With Wordsworth and Doyle, the reader hears the birds singing in the mist.” Carrie Etter
 
Something so wild and new in this feeling is very composite and very metamorphic. 

Special Mention in the 2021 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet

This title is now sold out but more information about Something so wild and new in this feeling can be found here.


A Woven Rope -- Jenna Plewes -- 18 March 2021


“Jenna Plewes has a remarkable gift for infusing every subject with an imagery and a sensuality which are detailed and exact, so that you are convinced of the truthfulness of the emotions expressed. Every poem here contributes to the whole, but for me the outstanding section is the third: nowhere else have I seen the carer’s role exemplified with such clarity. She seems to have unlimited empathy for the subjects of the sequence, and she never tips over into sentimentality. This book, Jenna Plewes’s fifth, is her strongest yet.” John Killick

“Grace and purpose distinguish this collection where poems trace the arc of parenting and explore the manifold challenges of being in the world.  This collection also observes the natural world, its beauties, and its terrors, and is unafraid to confront violence and cruelty.  The writing throughout is unforced, fine-drawn, lyrical, heart-felt.” Penelope Shuttle

A Woven Rope is very searching and very forgiving.

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


Orphaned

The road is reeling him in
mile after mile after mile,
pulling him through dark waters.

Needlefish aim for his eyes,
shoal after shoal hit the glass;
he stares ahead, unblinking,
feels the line tighten, then slacken,
the hook deep in his gut holds. 
He lets the night stream past,

conjures her voice, smell of her skin, 
paper-thin feel of her fingers,  
replays their wordless conversation.    

Wipers click a mantra in his head;
the tug and tear of severing
is still to come.



May We All Be Artefacts -- Chloe Hanks -- 14 April 2021

“Chloe Hanks’ melodic writing style rocks the reader into a dream-like state, with hauntingly beautiful scenes of autumnal skies and ghostly ballets. May We All Be Artefacts is a landscape of glorious imagery, transporting the reader to magical realities before bringing the point home with heartbreaking poignancy. This is a collection for the poets, for the lovers and above all for the dreamers.” 

Scarlett Ward Bennet

May We All Be Artefacts is an exciting and urgent new release, from a powerful and distinct voice. Hanks intermittently borrows from existing artwork, striking strong intertextual links with other artists, while also establishing her own perspectives. She borrows from magic, folklore and feminism to create fierce and sometimes disturbing narratives throughout. Neither trite nor forced, Hanks’ use of structure and imagery complement each other, further compounding the dark fairy-tale feel that is infused in these works. This is a debut pamphlet that shouts its arrival, to be consumed in one sitting – then read, and read again – May We All Be Artefacts showcases Hanks’ skillset and potential, marking her out as a compelling new poet.”

Charley Barnes

May We All Be Artefacts is very candid, yet very contemplative.

Winner of the V. Press Prize for Poetry 2020

“This year’s winning portfolio for the V. Press Prize for Poetry is ‘May We All Be Artefacts’ – chosen from the University of Worcester’s shortlist of five for its striking and thought-provoking imagery, focal slants and choice of words. These are poems crafted with a painter’s eye for vivid details and a poet’s ear for language, its sounds and music. The scenes brought to life feel real, relevant and resonant.”

Sarah Leavesley, V. Press editor and prize judge

A sample poem from this chapbook can be found below. More information and ordering for May We All Be Artefacts can be found here.


I Am a Drawing of a Flower

You should see it in me,
the way Sylvia draws the flowers 
even the texture of the paper.
The weight of ink,
the scratch. I am burdened
by this desire to appear
delicate whilst inside
the fires rage on 
you cannot save the art
I am determined to destroy.

I lose myself in the lines
and you fail to notice 
so long as it looks nice.
I filter myself like ground coffee
until the bad stuff is gone;
it’s time to move on.
Like Sylvia when she draws
the flowers  no one knows
what goes on below
where the wildflowers grow


Set a Crow to Catch a Crow -- Mary-Jane Holmes -- 6 September 2021

“These are stories that pulse with transformation, visceral, lush, and sound-rich. In Holmes’ lyrically-charged short fictions, worlds tilt, horizons thrum and yearnings come unmoored, and the language pulls us close to the bloodstream of her characters, feeling for their pressure-points, their broken wings. Their land and homescapes leap to life around them, set alight by breath-catching images that bind us into the textures and electrons of each scene, skin and earth, creek, board and bone. Each brief diorama in this volume delivers us a ‘quivering glint’ of characters caught in slipstream instants, lingering on the verge of fission, or hauled into ‘dark runnels of the heart’ where currents of longing and threat inescapably converge. Holmes’ writing rubs the fibres of life between our fingers, so we feel its restlessness and wonder.” Tracey Slaughter 

“The stories that fill Mary-Jane Holmes’ Set a Crow to Catch a Crow are perfect, precise, highly burnished narrative shards that describe a moment in time but imply both what came before this moment and very likely may come after. It might only be a grain you are offered but you get a whole world. It is only writing of a very high order can pull off the feat that is pulled off here.” Carlo Gébler 

Set a Crow to Catch a Crow is very textured and very liminal. 

A sample flash fiction from this chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information about Set a Crow to Catch a Crow 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.

Dispatch

Eithne was spiking mole runs with hawthorn stakes when the postman arrived with a package.
    “Addressed to Eros,” he said, aiming the scanner at the barcode.
    “Like the god?” she asked, watching the wink of the laser’s red eye.
    The postman shrugged. 
    “Only me here now, Tom.” 
    They both looked at the house, its cracked gutters, the bluebottle carcasses lining the windowsills.
    “I can return it to the depot,” Tom said, as a ripple of soil erupted by the back tyre of his van. A pink snout sniffed the air, then disappeared.
    She took the box. No weight to it or return address, no rattle or slide of contents when shook.
    Back in the pantry, she put it between the Oxo cubes and baking soda, the only place in the building dry and vermin-free.
    She picked up the cuttings again, crouched by the fresh mound of earth. She chose a stem with the thickest thorns, noticing then the buds still intact, the rose-flush of the petals just showing. She ran her index finger over them, smooth as fur. She went back to the pantry, picked out a pickle jar, filled it with water, dusted the windowsill and set the stems on the ledge. The water caught the pale flash of spring sunlight. Time I spruced the place up a bit, she thought, pulling each stake from where she’d placed it that morning, scanning the road for a quivering glint of a vehicle, hope lighting the dark runnels of her heart. 

To Boldly Go -- Martin Zarrop -- 13 September 2021

“I was astonished by the versatility of these poems, the dizzying ride from early space exploration to a future of AI and artificial meat. Zarrop knows his stuff but wears his knowledge lightly. There is humour here among the surreal and the sci fi. I loved ‘A Quiet Drink’ which opens ‘In space, nobody can hear you fart’ and ‘Wasp–76b' which starts ‘Gene Kelly had it easy. You/ try dancing through liquid metal/ clad in a tank top’. His is a quirky, witty, unique voice and there is an underlying seriousness to these poems which reward reading and rereading.” Carole Bromley

“If you've ever wondered what happened to all the animals that we put into space, they live on and tell their stories in the corners of these poems. This pamphlet examines the tragedy and farce of our world from unusual perspectives and always at a slight distance, whether it’s through the first humans on Mars or a robotic home help. With a dry sense of humour and perfect observation these poems equip us for a future of lab-grown meat and space travel…I hope you’re ready To Boldly Go.” Suzannah Evans

To Boldly Go is very worried out there but very hopeful.

A sample poem from this chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for To Boldly Go can be found here.


Chocolate

It’s five years since the last delivery
of nuclear fuel, essential metals
we can’t mine, dark chocolate bars
reminding us of home.

The data came to us in holograms
across an airless sea, telling
of the latest viral curse, of infertility
and chaos, martial law.

We’re on our own.
It’s three years since the last goodbye,
the vaccine failures, messages of love
then suddenly – no reason – silence.

We cultivate our gardens, ration breath,
grow seed potatoes, culture meat,
pray the projector doesn’t fail
while cheering The Martian’s safe return.

Last month we climbed Olympus Mons
but dream of Earthrise, egg on toast,
before another mess of spuds.
We miss the chocolate most.


Family Frames -- Alison Woodhouse -- 24 September 2021

Family Frames, the debut flash fiction collection by Alison Woodhouse, is like a treasured album of photographs you’ll want to return to again and again to discover more detail and depth. Each story is exquisitely composed. With vivid and evocative images of place and time, Woodhouse shows the distance, closeness and heartbreak within family relationships. The collection is satisfyingly framed with slightly different versions of the same story, placed at the beginning and the end. The subtle yet powerful variations in the second version emphasise one of the themes of the book – how fierce love can carry a family through anything that life brings.” Jude Higgins

“To quote from one of the titles in this fine collection, ‘home is not a place, but a feeling’. This is a moving exploration of family dynamics and the feelings that home engenders. Myths jostle with memory, siblings grieve together or alone, marriages end, parents disappoint. There is loss and sacrifice, grief and sorrow, but above all, a fierce love that binds families together. Beautiful and poignant.” Damhnait Monaghan

These flash fictions explore the power we possess to shift our relationships by examining our memories, questioning fixed narratives, revealing new perspectives. Family Frames is very raw and very relatable.

A sample flash fiction from this chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Family Frames can be found here.


Broken

The sparrow hawk lay on the bracken, its broken wing splayed sideways. It trembled violently when the boy picked it up. 

“Can I keep it?” he asked.

“You can’t save it,” his father said. “Better to leave it. You’ll only be disappointed.”

The boy argued and threatened to cry and looked so like his mother the father couldn’t say no. They took the sparrow hawk back to the house and made a bed for it out of a box lined with straw. The boy put the box in his bedroom. When his father came to say goodnight, the boy asked what should they feed the bird and his father said in the morning they’d dig for worms. 

“How will I keep him happy until then?” the boy asked and his father said the bird did not know what happiness was. 

“See how frightened he is,” the boy said but his father could not look into the sparrow hawk’s black eye. 



knots, tangles, fankles -- Alex Reed -- 18 October 2021

“Re-imagining the research of Laing and Esterson, Alex Reed’s multi-vocal knots, tangles, fankles asks important questions about sanity, madness and the family in a time before the digital became part of the story. This story revolves around Hazel, a young working class girl with the odds stacked against her, and it is both everyday and appalling. A shifting constellation of voices, overheard from behind closed doors, animates an insightful and sensitive collection of poems to think, learn and feel with. Carefully choreographed, all the protagonists earn our sympathy. They hold up a mirror to the human predicament – in black and white, compelling and filmic, concealing as much as they reveal, getting under your skin and staying with you long after reading the last page.” Linda France

“Alex Reed’s debut poetry collection knots, tangles, fankles tells the powerful, heart-breaking story of Hazel, sixteen years old and diagnosed as schizophrenic. Demonstrating a deft, versatile, and compassionate hand, Reed unveils Hazel’s true plight, not only through the surreal imagery of her thoughts, but also through the voices of those both hindering and healing her: from alarmed and hyper-protective parents, to institutionalised hospital staff, to the grounding, reassuring, real-life Dr Aaron Esterson, who along with R. D. Laing sought to uncover the source of mental illness in families using unconventional theories and methods. Though this is Hazel’s journey, each of Reed’s characters is undergoing their own personal struggle and anguish. In a setting similar to Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and based on true cases, Esterson enables Hazel ‘but for the first time to hear [her] own voice’. It speaks to Reed’s ability as a poet that such a moment is so keenly felt and quietly celebrated by the reader, especially in the light of what follows.” Charles G Lauder Jr

Knots, tangles, fankles is a very poignant and very penetrating poetic sequence in multiple voices.

A sample poem from the collection can be found below. More information and ordering for knots, tangles, fankles can be found here.


woodentop

clackety-clack     rattity-tat
fast as my clockwork legs can take me

past the room where the nurses drink tea
a voice on the telly is talking about me

this is a story about the woodentops
mummy & daddy woodentop

their woodentop girl whose name was hazel
& the biggest spotty dog you ever did see

one day daddy came home for his dinner
mummy was busy in the kitchen

little hazel was nowhere to be seen
that girl was always disappearing

mummy woodentop said to daddy woodentop
the girl’s not right, we’ll have her mended

let’s call for the woodentop doctor
he’ll saw her head open, hack out the rot

paint her fresh eyes & a pretty red mouth
fix her with glue just like new

clackety-clack     rattity-tat
down the corridor to meet the doctor

but dr esterson didn’t have a saw
never did much, just sat in his room

smiled when she came through the door
then lit up his pipe & winked as he asked

did you ever wish to be real
not made of wood?


What love would smell like -- sk grout -- 2 December 2021

“In SK Grout's debut pamphlet, romantic love between women is both sensual and spiritual. These atmospheric, compelling poems evoke a richly felt and observed sensibility, an experience to relish again and again,  ‘bright full of starwild’.” Carrie Etter

What love would smell like expertly zeroes in on the sensual and vibrant rhythms of the body. Porches, couches, cafés and twilit streets are reinvented as poignant sites of intimacy and want. Savouring colour, light, and the ‘sweet, blistered pleasure’ of scent, SK Grout has created an enchanting ‘poetry of simmering’.”
Natalie Linh Bolderston

What love would smell like is very beautiful and very beguiling.

A sample poem from this poetry chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for What love would smell like can be found here.


To Katerina

even in another time
I will buy too many books
and you will get tattoos of
the eclipse of the moon
etched into the skin beneath
your wrist bones;
I will drink coffee, I will drink tea
and you will bathe in the
first light of the winter sun
spread across the living room floor
like an eagle cradling flight;
I will respond to all emails,
“Sorry it’s late”; and you will
collect juniper berries, periwinkle shells,
cry over oxidised lava rocks burnt black, 
press cornflower petals into books
you will never read;
I will stay home, you will tree-pose;
I will listen to Chopin’s polonaises,
you will dream ferocious big,
think jazz blue,
lap in an endless pool of innovation;
someone, I tell you,
will remember us – you nod: the Internet,
credit history and our names in the sand
first published in Banshee Lit


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.