Poetry
Always subjective, we have tried to add here some of our local poets, and some collections which will appeal to a broad audience. Please contact us if you would like an emailed sample of any of the collections, like a virtual 'dip' into the book:)
All the Good Things You Deserve, Elaine Feeney ( poetry April 2024)
£12.99
How do we love, trust and create in the aftermath of trauma? How do we name and speak that love?In this powerful new collection from acclaimed poet and novelist Elaine Feeney, images andmemory circle and recur, and the journey from pain towards a place of greater safety is far from linear. All the Good Things You Deserve juxtaposes violence, hurt and the tyranny of shame with love, beauty and the transformative possibilities of art.
Elaine has also written the novel ' How to Build a Boat' - also available via our website.
100 Happy Poems , ed Jane McMorland-Hunter ( hardback May 2024)
£12.99
A compact collection of 100 supremely jolly poems to cheer you up wherever you are. We can all benefit from a portable little nugget of happiness to soothe our weary souls in moments of stress, sadness and hardship. 100 Happy Poems gives you exactly that: 100 specially selected and sublimely happy poems to turn to in times of need, from cosy fireside idylls to exhilarating outdoor adventures, encounters with the beauty of nature, interactions with our fellow humans, and moments of quiet reflection. This little bit of happiness is always on hand, and it includes uplifting words from some of the greatest poets ever to put pen to paper, from Emily Brontë wandering on the moors and Paul Laurence Dunbar welcoming his beloved to Katherine Mansfield reliving a childhood moment, Wendy Cope sharing an orange, and Algernon Charles Swinburne chatting to his cat.
Quirkily and colourfully designed, this wonderful book is the perfect way to lift your spirits in times of turmoil. Keep it in your pocket, bag or desk drawer for an instant dose of joy when you are in need of a boost.
Rapture’s Road, by Seán Hewitt ( paperback Jan 2024)
£12.99
n this remarkable second collection, Seán Hewitt describes a journey haunted by love, loss and estrangement - from one of the Sunday Times 30 under 30 in Ireland 'Points to a bright future for Irish poetry' SUNDAY TIMES
As the mind wanders and becomes spectral, these poems forge their own unique path through the landscape. The road Hewitt takes us on is a sleepwalk into the nightwoods, a dream-state where nature is by turns regenerated and broken, and where the split self of the speaker is interrupted by a series of ghosts, memories and encounters. Following the reciprocal relationship between queer sexuality and the natural world that he explored in Tongues of Fire, the poet conjures us here into a trance: a deep delirium of hypnotic, hectic rapture where everything is called into question, until a union is finally achieved – a union in nature, with nature.
A threnody for what is lost, a dance of apocalypse and rebirth, Rapture’s Road draws us through what is hidden, secret, often forbidden, to a state of ecstasy. It leads into the humid night, through lethal love and grief, and glimpses, at the end of the journey, a place of tenderness and reawakening.
Highland Boundary Fault, Emma McKervey ( paperback May 2024)
£12.99
Highland Boundary Fault is a daring and immersive odyssey that draws the reader into a mesmerising medley of myth, history, art, and a love story that travels from the Outer Hebrides to the Scottish mainland. The wild landscapes of the Highlands, the shipyards of Greenock on the Clyde estuary, the ancient worlds of story, are peopled by a cast of characters who are both archetypes, and flesh and blood, fantastical and familiar, their endeavours and struggles awakening our deepest memories and longings.
Lola in Belfast, Pallavi Padma-Uday ( hardback, May 2024)
£10.00
The second collection, again as beautifully produced as before, from Belfast based and Indian born Pallavi Padma- Uday.
With a foreword by Nandi Jola.
Pallavi's poems touch on both cultures, and the absolute universalities of life as a woman, of illness, and love, and home.
Cairn, Kathleen Jamie ( Paperback June 2024)
£9.99
'This marvel of a book is a profound meditation on the precariousness of the planet... these pieces kept bringing tears to my eyes, catching me offguard ... it is what art or, in this case, wonderful writing can do.' Kate Kellaway, Observer
Cairn: A marker on open land, a memorial, a viewpoint shared by strangers.
For the last five years poet and author Kathleen Jamie has been turning her attention to a new form of writing: micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments. Placed together, like the stones of a wayside cairn, they mark a changing psychic and physical landscape. The virtuosity of these short pieces is both subtle and deceptive.
Jamie's intent 'noticing' of the natural world is suffused with a clear-eyed awareness of all we endanger. She considers the future her children face, while recalling her own childhood and notes the lost innocence in the way we respond to the dramas of nature. With meticulous care she marks the point she has reached, in life and within the cascading crises of our times.
Cairn resonates with a beauty and wisdom that only an artist of Jamie's calibre could achieve.
Ash Keys, Michael Longley ( hardback July 2024 / paperback July 2025)
£16.00
Published to coincide with his 85th birthday, Ash Keys looks back on the extraordinary career of the last surviving member of the triumvirate of poets that rose out of 1960s Belfast'
'A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders' SEAMUS HEANEY
The title of Michael Longley’s New Selected Poems is taken from his poem ‘Ash Keys’. The wing-shaped, wind-borne seeds of the ash-tree might be an image for poems in search of their readers. This selection, based on thirteen individual collections, represents Longley’s unusual range as a lyric poet.
It shows how his themes, genres and forms have evolved and interlaced since the 1960s. Love, violence, the natural world, art, psychodrama, family, the Great War, the Homeric past and Northern Ireland’s troubled present cohabit in these pages – as do depth, wit and beauty. Longley’s poems of the west of Ireland, which pivot on Carrigskeewaun, his ‘soul landscape’, have also made him a pioneer of ‘eco-poetry’.
Michael Longley sadly passed away shortly after the publication of the hardback edition of these poems in January 2025.
Growing Brave, Donna Ashworth ( hardback Sept 2024)
£14.99
Growing Brave : Words to soothe fear and let in more life
by Donna Ashworth
In this powerful new collection of wisdom and poetry, Donna Ashworth helps us to find strength and courage on the days we feel lost, to pick ourselves up when times are hard, to soothe fear and self-doubt when we are in their grip, and to let in more life and love as we brave our challenges. Every day we are bombarded by thoughts, feelings and information that make us feel anxious and afraid.
We worry we don't measure up, we are scared of failure and we find it hard to be ourselves. We also feel powerless watching the world getting messier. Fear is a limiting factor for many of us and if we don't challenge it we can find ourselves keeping out more of the good stuff in life than the bad.
With poems such as 'One Day You'll See', 'Growing in Moonlight', 'The Comparing' and 'Always There', bestselling author Donna Ashworth helps us to see that whatever we are facing, no matter how small or afraid we feel, we make the biggest difference in this world and to our own happiness when we are brave enough to show up as ourselves.
Poetry Unbound, Padraig O'Tuama ( paperback Feb 2024)
£20.00
This inspiring collection, curated by the host of the Poetry Unbound, presents fifty poems about what it means to be alive in the world today. Each poem is paired with Pádraig's illuminating commentary that offers personal anecdotes and generous insights into the content of the poem. Engaging, accessible and inviting, Poetry Unbound is the perfect companion for everyone who loves poetry and for anyone who wants to go deeper into poetry but doesn't necessarily know how to do so.
Contributors include Hanif Abdurraqib, Patience Agbabi, Raymond Antrobus, Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, Kei Miller, Roger Robinson, Lemn Sissay, Layli Long Soldier and more.
