Knucklebones and Pegs: Pamela Gormally, Indigo Dreams
Pamela Gormally lives in Alnwick, Northumberland, and holds an MA in creative writing from Newcastle University. She won first prize in the Sonnet or Not competition 2022 and third prize in the Hippocrates Poetry and Medicine competition in the same year.
On one level, ‘Knucklebones and Pegs’ explores the effects of early childhood cancer, separation and loss, and a long journey of healing and ...
11th June 2026
The last one picked: Stuart Handysides, Indigo Dreams
Evidence of a disciplined religious upbringing betrays itself in the titles and subject matter of a number of poems at the start of this collection. Elsewhere, there are echoes of the first lines of hymns, with Biblical phraseology present in other poems. The title of the collection is to be found ...
29th May 2026
The Life and Times of Tommy Mackay: Maggie Mackay, Yaffle Press
Maggie Mackay is from Dunfermline, and winds family history into her poems. She has been published in a number of print and online poetry magazines and journals. Her previous publications include a pa...
17th May 2026
Emergency Dream: Polly Atkin, Seren
Polly Atkin is an award-winning poet and non-fiction writer whose work focuses on nature, place and disability. Her previous poetry collections published with Seren include Basic Nest Architecture (20...
8th May 2026
Don't despair: American poet Jane Hirshfield's message
Every year the US poet Jane Hirshfield writes a poem on New Year’s Day. One such poem concludes with the admonition: “Don’t despair of this falling world, not yet …” (‘Counting, New Year’s Morning, Wh...
28th April 2026
Fiery Words for Hellish Times: Attila the Stockbroker, Flapjack Press
The news has become so bad it’s difficult to find the words to write about it. That’s how I feel, sometimes, at least. But luckily Attila the Stockbroker has not been left speechless. The veteran punk...
26th April 2026
What poet Rowan McCabe learned on the doorsteps
“I knock on the door … I count to 45 in my head. I tell them I’m doing an art project, being a bit liberal with the truth. And then I do a poem to introduce myself.” Thus spoke Rowan McCabe, aka the D...
23rd April 2026
Bringing it all back home: the camaraderie of coal-mining
It’s taken me a while to get round to writing this review of a momentous poetry gathering, but I couldn’t let it go unrecorded. On the last weekend in March around 40 poets and audience gathered at Wo...
20th April 2026
Spirit of the north: Red Squirrel Press celebrates 20 years
I have seen people physically moved by the ghosts that haunt the Newcastle Lit and Phil Library. One such apparition is said to be the ghost of the legendary Mrs Affleck. On Wednesday night she would ...
19th April 2026
Home, and pleasure dome? Poet's book based on housing co-op
Award-winning poet Tallulah Howarth celebrated the publication of her latest book An Alternative Xanadu this month with two launch events. The first was in her home city of Leeds last week and the Lon...
10th April 2026
Tigress with Wings: Rupinder Kaur Waraich, Seren
Birmingham-based multidisciplinary artist and writer Rupinder Kaur Waraich is a BBC New Creative. Her one-woman show Imperfect, Perfect Woman was performed at Wolverhampton literature festival in 2022...
19th March 2026
Wise as Water: Jeremy Loynes, Vole Books
This latest collection of poems by Surrey-based writer Jeremy Loynes follows on from his poetry pamphlet Turning which was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2018. In Wise as Water we discover similar p...
2nd March 2026
Slow Migrations: Adam Horovitz, Indigo Dreams
This collection of poems by Adam Horovitz was inspired by the Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology of the Cotswolds exhibited at the Corinium museum, Cirencester, and the prehistoric and Roman artefac...
1st March 2026
The Way the Water Held Me: Catherine Redford, Emma Press
Catherine Redford began writing after the early death of her partner and is now widely published. The Way the Water Held Me is her debut collection, dedicated to the memory of her partner, Rebecca Mar...
28th February 2026
The Sight of Light. The Sound of Clouds. The Touch of Skin: Pia Tafdrup, Bloodaxe
Danish-born writer Pia Tafdrup is the author of over 20 collections of verse, which are often organised into themed sequences. Her latest is a series of five books on the human senses collectively ref...
21st February 2026
The Storm's Flora: Laura Wainwright, Seren
Cardiff-born writer, artist and musician Laura Wainwright grew up in Newport where she still lives. She has a PhD in English literature from Cardiff University where her thesis focused on Anglophone W...
30th January 2026
A Few More Sunrises Yet Before It Ends: Martin Hayes, Broken Sleep Books
Martin Hayes was born in London and has lived around Edgware Road all his life. This major traffic artery running north from Marble Arch was once part of the Roman road Watling Street. Countless peopl...
22nd January 2026
The Taste of Lightning: Ivan V Lalić, Bloodaxe
Ivan V Lalić (1931-1996) was born in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital. The summers of his childhood were spent in western Serbia, an idyll that came to an abrupt end with the Nazi invasion i...
3rd January 2026
Polar Corona: Caroline Gill, Hedgehog Poetry Press
Caroline Gill, who currently lives in Suffolk, grew up in London, Kent and Norfolk before moving with David, her archaeologist husband, to Rome, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge and Swansea. She graduat...
3rd January 2026
