The English Summer (Shortlisted, 2022 Forward Poetry Prizes for Best First Collection)

Dead fridges, dragon-slaying horses and zombies welcome you to Holly Hopkins’ The English Summer, a wonderfully imaginative debut. Whilst remaining fantastical and playful, this collection dissects the roots of humanity and its relationship to our planet at large. Reimagining historical myths and traditions with an urbane sense of familiarity, Hopkins’ collection deracinates contemporary Englanders amidst a growing climate crisis. Reading these poems is like looking into an essential truth. Through both humour and accusation, storytelling from unique and unthinkable angles, Hopkins underscores the impending tragedy that is modern life.

The Sun is Open

The Sun is Open is a poetry collection from Northern Irish poet and academic Gail McConnell. McConnell had previously published two poetry pamphlets, Fourteen (2018) and Fothermather (2019).
From the very first page which details the tragic death of McConnell’s father by a bullet in front of her three-year-old self, it is made immediately clear to the reader that this will be a difficult and confrontational read.

Notes on the Sonnets (Winner, Forward Prize for Best Collection)

In this most innovative of collections, Notes on the Sonnets, epigraphs taken from the first lines of Shakespeare’s sonnets are conjoined, non-sequentially, with lines of prose poetry. These convey thoughts as digressive, associative and reflexive as any creative prose essay ­– in the Paul Klee sense of ideas being taken for a walk – lines that contain vestiges of the original tropes only recustomised for the 21st Century.

After the Formalities (Shortlisted, 2019 TS Eliot Poetry Prize)

It would be easiest to describe Anthony Anaxagorou’s debut collection, After the Formalities, as one that deals with Big Issues. Racism, immigration, and trauma all feature large here. Add to this, as per the publisher’s blurb, ‘tracking the male body’, ‘the threat of violence’, and ‘global histories’. These are all appropriate things to write about, Read More

THE PERSEVERANCE (FORWARD PRIZE SHORTLISTED, THE FELIX DENNIS PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION)

Raymond Antrobus has chosen the epigraph for his first collection wisely: ‘There is no telling what language is inside the body’ (Robin Coste Lewis). Antrobus explores his experiences with late-diagnosed Deafness, mixed heritage experience (Antrobus is Jamacian British), and an alcoholic parent; but beneath these concerns is ultimately his passion for communication. There’s something that Read More

Sunshine (Shortlisted, 2016 Costa Poetry Award)

“This book is gonna be a killer. It’s gonna suck me dry, / suck me white, suck my insides out and    leave me hollow and high.” (“And All the Things That We Could Do I Face Today”) A standard literary trope is to create expectations and defy them. So, to a seasoned reader, a Read More

Mondeo Man

Luke Wright’s career as a poet has emphasised the indelible connection between writing and performance. Wright has been performing his poetry since he was 17 but it wasn’t until 2000 that he really explored poetry’s potential in the artistic community, co-founding Aisle16 with Ross Sutherland. Aisle16 mostly features Wright and Sutherland’s own work, alongside those Read More

Beautiful Girls

If you keep up with magazines such as 3:AM, Under the Radar, Hearing Voices or Tears in the Fence, you may be familiar with many of Melissa Lee-Houghton’s poems in Beautiful Girls. Previously recognised in the Lupus UK Competition as well as by The New Writer Collection, Beautiful Girls is now listed as a Poetry Read More

Forms of Protest

Forms of Protest is, at first read, quite a bizarre piece of work. However, amongst Hannah Silva’s strange and unconventional writing there is a wealth of inventive and interesting content. Silva’s background in music, including playing the recorder and her experience in theatre, sees her work with sounds and rhetoric in interesting ways. The collection Read More