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'I can't face the big stuff so I comb the moors for a tiny yellow flower' - so begins Tormentil, the second poetry collection by Ian Humphreys. Set largely in the starkly beautiful West Yorkshire moorlands, these poems creep and bloom across geographies and time.

The Field in Winter, the third collection of poetry by David Clarke, winner of the Michael Marks Award, elegantly reflects on memory, time, and the very particular landscape of loss, in a calendar of poems, a 'charm of words' that track and loop through seasons of nature and living.

Velvel's Violin, a moving and political fifth collection by TS Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Jacqueline Saphra, places us on the shifting ground between past and present. Through missing histories of the Jewish diaspora, it is a call for empathy and a warning where the legacy of the Holocaust echoes current narratives of displacement and migration.

Wild Life by James McDermott explores the nature of queerness, the queerness of nature, and the queerness of 'natural' masculinity. In bold poems that root themselves firmly in the coastal landscapes of North Norfolk, a vivid and radical dialogue between nature, sexuality and self-discovery emerges.

More Than Weeds, the debut poetry collection by L. Kiew, explores the language of migration and how it is used in relation to plant and animal species, as well as peoples. These knowledgeable and verdant poems draw deeply on botanical and ecological detail and reveal secret histories thriving in the gaps between definitions; here are precious seedlings, unforced flowers, tongues of leaves, tangled roots and rhizomes. With roots in decolonialising botany and horticulture movements, and influenced by the impact of the climate crisis and regenerative gardening practices, Kiew's poetry is alive and thronging with the interconnected nature of things - and the formative forces of nurture, family, food, refuge and love. Human and plant voices speak for themselves of experiences of belonging and displacement, as well as encounters with violence. These vivid poems that ask us to scrutinise what is really contained or constrained by demarcations - whether those of weed or wildflower, or of borders and hostile environments.

What do you do when you are a god âEUR" but powerless and unable to prevent one of your favourite species from their insatiable, accelerating death wish? Do you try to shout louder and more insistently, or instead reinvent yourself as a troubadour of romantic ruin? Such are the dilemmas posed by Rishi Dastidar in his third poetry collection NeptuneâEUR(TM)s Projects, a reshaping of mythology for the climate crisis era which gives bold consideration to the stark choices we face. A post-apocalyptic jig and reel, these poems are compelling, deadpan yarns of the sea, full of both fury and fun. In NeptuneâEUR(TM)s Projects the end of humanity is made wry, thrilling âEUR" and alive.

White Ghosts, the debut by poet and novelist Katie Hale, is a collection of revealing, unflinching poems tracing maternal lines and difficult legacies of slavery and whiteness interwoven into the fabric of America. Through four hundred years of female migration, these poems address white guilt.

You live and then you die. That's the only certainty there is, right? Using love as its guide, Proof of Life on Earth, the debut poetry collection by Degna Stone, looks at all the stops between our arrival and our departure. These poems examine matters of the heart (both the metaphorical and medical kind), of race and discrimination, of the body, mind and self - each in forensic detail, attentive and curious of what moves, shapes, and makes us alive.In between are the landmarks which populate the rich terrain of this collection; not only of our lives through youth to adulthood, but of history, of the long shadows of empire, and of landscapes themselves - especially those of the northeast of England, evocative, rugged and monumental. Stone's deft and scalpel-sharp poetry explores human existence shaped by mortality and experience, and asks what it means to do more than survive - to live in defiance, openness and awareness.

Out of the doll's house and into the woods, Bunny Girls steps out of the shadows of girlhood and looks at the world with wide eyes. Surreal, spiky, wise and darkly funny, this new collection by Costa-winning author and poet Angela Readman expertly mixes shades of film noir, northern wit, and magic realism. Through the lens of childhood, these poems address autism, anxiety, and darker concerns buried by cultural ideals of femininity.Here in Readman's skilful words are odes to severed heads, angels and Disney villains, Marilyn Monroe's body double, squashed slugs, sexual awakenings, Wendy-houses and snow globes, nosebleeds and blackbirds. Women are both invisible and actively writing themselves into the visible. Where there is isolation and dislocation, its counterbalance is finding breathless, reckless joy in the acts of creation and imagination. At its heart, this enlivening, magnificent book is about darkness and light, the lovely and the frightening, the beautiful and the worrying.

Living by Troubled Waters is the third poetry collection by Roy McFarlane - an extraordinary, uncompromising book exploring slavery, colonialism, and the continued tragedies visited upon Black bodies whilst these legacies remain unresolved. In his close examination of the horror of racialised violence, McFarlane examines how the strong currents of the past and present flow side by side. His poems ask us to think about the Black Mediterranean of today as much as we do about the Windrush scandal and the aftershocks of trans-Atlantic slavery, where Black people are still imprisoned, enslaved and drowned as they flee persecution and poverty.Living by Troubled Waters is innovative, formally experimental and far ranging in scope; erasure & inclusion (to make known) poems interweave and speak to the wider body of the collection. In his use of archival documents as a space for activism and linguistic intervention, McFarlane writes back into history, reclaiming voices and reshaping narratives. His poems also draw strength from themes of place and displacement, social justice, Black motherhood, family, art - and from the power of poetry itself as a witness to troubled times.

There is (still) love here, the compelling new collection of poetry by Dean Atta, is a personal and powerful exploration of relationships, love and loss, encompassing LGBTQ+ and Black history, Greek Cypriot heritage, pride and identity, dislocation and belonging.Atta's tender, precisely-crafted and generous poems seek consolation and affirmation. These are poems as an antidote for challenging times, whether facing prejudice or the challenges of the pandemic, experiencing grief or recovering from heartbreak. Here, we encounter blue feelings and homesickness, things lost in translation and the pressures of the many roles we play in life. We also find the recipes of home, gifts and giving, the togetherness of community and connection to help us to heal. There is still love here - and journeys towards forgiveness, acceptance, queer joy and the power to unapologetically be yourself and fully embrace who you are.

Notes from a Shipwreck, the third collection of poetry by Jessica Mookherjee, is a richly detailed and illuminating voyage of dislocation and longing. By turns evocative, unsettling, and full of 'small acts of magic', Mookherjee simultaneously finds the past, present, and future in the tempestuous, lyrical tides that flow through her poems.Here, seafaring lore and shanties interweave with wreckage and survival, drawn by strong currents of history - where migration, colonialism, pandemics and climate change shape the course we are on. The sea is a territory of grief and transformation, alluring and dangerous, where safe harbours and landfall are not always certain. Mookherjee's enchanting, salt-sharp poetry encompasses the many journeys embarked on - whether seeking refuge, escape, or into exile - and consider not only the deep blue sea and its myriad mythologies, but to understand 'what makes a land and person,' - the keen human instinct to seek belonging.

Ramona Herdman's Glut is a lush, entertaining, and bittersweet collection of poems about how we live together and find meaning through rules and rituals around food, family, alcohol, work, nature, sex and love. These vividly-realised, nimble poems probe at the delicate balancing acts we - our bodies and our minds - perform in life: between power and trust, between convention and rebellion, and between what is enough and what is too much. All the time, Herdman's spry poetry keeps a gimlet eye on our impulse to make sense of it all - of how we live and work together, and what strategies will help us to navigate our way through the tangled undergrowth of negotiation and misunderstanding. Glut is a lustrous, darkly funny, open-hearted book on the distance between people, on satisfying appetites, and on seeking both pleasure and consolation.

Tania Hershman's Still Life With Octopus is an exquisitely-attuned second collection, a philosophical and poetic interrogation of the boundaries of animal and human worlds and the intimate nature of time, being and joy. Exploring the slippage between the life of the mind and the life of the body - in particular, those belonging to women - Hershman wonders what might happen if we let go of our preconceptions of both reality and language, taking nothing for granted and starting again from first principles, with fresh eyes. While trying to fathom our physical and metaphysical existence, Hershman doesn't ignore the other forms of intelligent life we share our planet with; her octopus is envisioned both as a creature within and alongside us and as a way to consider our place as humans within a greater chain of co-existence. Still Life With Octopus is a precisely observed and open-hearted gift of a book.

Peter Raynard's Manland is a bold, brilliant and outspoken new collection of poems that scrutinise men and manhood, mental health, working class lives and disability. Aloud and alive with music, wit, anger and rebellion, this is an accomplished, politically-aware and vital book. Raynard is a skilled observer, and these razor-sharp poems document parenthood through the lens of a stay-at-home dad, attempt to tell the truth about men and depression, study our cultural, social and medical relationships with drugs and drug-taking, and lay bare the realities of life at the sharpest edges of society. By turns frank, painful and bleakly funny, this humane and brilliant book encompasses pride and prejudices, the bonds between lads and dads, the toxic pressures of masculinity and the way illness and poverty irrevocably shape lives.

Space Baby asks difficult questions about the Earth, its beings, and what lies ahead for them; how do we look to the future on a planet that's burning? How do we come to terms with our grief, and what can we believe in? If the human race destroys what we have, where will we go?In this dystopian, searching book, Evans mixes absurdity and wit with speculative, serious themes. Here, artificial intelligence and robots will 'cuddle you to sleep', the melting permafrost will reveal its surprises, and we encoutner the very first human baby born in space. Ultimately, Evans writes to acknowledge our responsibilities and interconnectedness with earth and all its lifeforms, as well as to our future generations. These are vivid, prescient poems of existence, and survival, which ask how we can still find joy on a ruined planet.

Daniel Sluman's third collection, single window is a hybrid memoir of poetry and images. One an amputee with chronic pain, the other suffering from Crohn's Disease and Fibromyalgia, Daniel Sluman and his wife Emily found the year of 2016 almost untenable. Unable to safely navigate the stairs to bed, they spent 24 hours a day together on their sofa, isolated from society except for a single window, where they watched the world moving around them. single window is an incomparable, uncompromising and starkly-realised sequence of poems in the form of a journal, which bear witness to the loneliness and fear experienced by disabled people living in Tory Britain. Through a precise, hyper-confessional fusion of poetry and photography, this book details the realities of disabled lives, exploring intimacy and unconditional love as well as isolation and confinement, and documenting a world that many people otherwise never see.

What motivates poets in the 21st century? How do they find their voice? What themes and subject matters inspire them? How do they cope with set-backs and deal with success? What keeps them writing? Why I Write Poetry, edited by Ian Humphreys, combines lively and thought-provoking essays, along with individual writing prompts to help you create your own new poetry. In this book, twenty-five contemporary poets reflect with insight, wit and wisdom on the writing life. Each offers their distinctive take on what inspires and spurs them on to write poetry. The essays shine a light on everything from performance, dialect, the body and paying attention, to bearing witness, finding your wings and joining the journey of poetry, and encompass the practical, personal, and political. Within these pages, youâEUR(TM)ll discover how a poetâEUR(TM)s background and values can fundamentally shape and inform their work. New voices sit alongside poets with many collections under their belts and youâEUR(TM)ll find encouragement, creative provocations, advice and, above all, reasons to write. Read on, learn and enjoy. With essays by: Romalyn Ante, Khairani Barokka, Hafsah Aneela Bashir, Leo Boix, Vahni Capildeo, Mary Jean Chan, Jo Clement, Sarah Corbett, Jane Commane, Rishi Dastidar, Jonathan Edwards, Rosie Garland, W. N. Herbert, Ian Humphreys, Keith Jarrett, Zaffar Kunial, Rachel Mann, Andrew McMillan, Kim Moore, Pascale Petit, Jacqueline Saphra, Clare Shaw, Daniel Sluman, Jean Sprackland, and Jennifer Wong.

Jane Burn's new poetry collection Be Feared is a captivating reclamation of self, sisterhood and love, encountering everything from the Snow Queen and the morning song of chainsaws to myths, monsters, plagues and infernos. Acknowledging fear, this book embraces discovery, moving from 'beware!' and 'bereft' towards a becoming - a process of translation and transformation, of finding a voice radiant with both curses and psalms. Rebellious, bloody, and encroached upon by violence, Burn's poetry examines survival, abuse and healing. Intensely imaginative, these incantatory poems rework fairy tale and folklore, invoke a divine carnival of sexuality and wild nature, and hold up enchanted mirrors to the everyday truths of being a working-class autistic woman, daring to become, claiming her own magnificent, unstoppable fluency and spell-making power.

Caleb Parkin's debut poetry collection, This Fruiting Body, plunges us into octopus raves and Sega Megadrive oceans, in the company of Saab hermit crabs and ASDA pride gnomes. It's a playful invitation to a queer ecopoetics that permeates our bodies and speech, our gardens, homes, and city suburbs. It reintroduces us to a Nature we've dragged up until it's unrecognisable. Parkin's perceptive poetry sparks with neon visuals, engaged in the joyful, urgent, imagining of alternative realities and new futures. How might we relate queerly and dearly to our environment and its shared conundrums? These adventurous poems delight in human and nonhuman intimacies, teem with life, ponder bug sex and put masculinities under the microscope. This Fruiting Body roves our grandiloquent planet, embracing our kinships with matter, culture, creatures and drag-mother Earth herself.