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The Hedgehog Poetry Press are proud to be able to share with you, the Selected Poems of one of the UK's finest poets, Gill McEvoy.Taking work from collections published by Happenstance Press, Cinnamon Press and the Hedgehog Poetry Press, Selected Poems shows a genius for finding the beauty in the everyday, and a perspective entirely her own. This is a masterful collection of work covering twenty years of the career of a poet that is truly unique.Gill McEvoy is a Hawthornden Fellow, has appeared on Sky Arts TV speaking about free verse as opposed to formal verse; was Artistic Director twice for "Chester Oyez!" the spoken word section of Chester Literature Festival, and is now a member of Company of Poets in Devon

Five years of seasons is an exhilarating journey of the imagination. Each verse is like a moving image captured from above by a hovering camera drone that employs both a wide-angle and a zoom lens. The verses ascend to the heights of the space station and down to the surface of the planet, across woods and fields and settlements, and traverse a lifetime that encompasses the exuberance of childhood and youth, the hopes and regrets of middle age and the futilities of old age. Enjoy the ride!"Five years of seasons. Over many years I have admired and enjoyed haiku so it was with great pleasure that I began reading this collection to discover a series of haiku that spans each of the four seasons over a period of five years. Spare and elegant the poems flow seamlessly conveying past and present experiences and also future hopes as we move through childhood to old age. There is knowledge and understanding of self and the poet's relationship with the world observed through nature. This is a distinctive and accomplished first collection and I admire the crafting and light touch of the poet as he deals with the big themes of love and loss, acknowledging the fragility of life and all that we observe around us both human and in nature."Eileen Carney Hulme, author of Stroking The Air"In Five years of seasons Phil Santus shares with the reader a range of perspectives and perceptions on the natural environment. The highly economical poems vary in their effect: sometimes powerfully evocative, sometimes quietly reflective and sometimes profoundly philosophical. Yet unpinning them all is the reassuring poet's voice, always compassionate and positive. This is a welcome addition to Hedgehog Poetry Press' growing catalogue and a worthy winner of its 'White Label - Quatre' Competition." Nigel Kent, Pushcart Prize nominated poet and author of Saudade"In Five years of seasons, Phil Santus reveals himself to be a writer of great sensitivity and environmental awareness. It is an impressive debut that introduces a poet of talent and virtuosity to a wider audience. These poems deal with the cycles of life through the passing seasons. They have a Wordsworthian quality to them that highlights the inexcusable damage that humanity has inflicted upon our planet and the devastation we have brought to what once was our beautiful Garden of Eden. It is a lyrical yet thought provoking achievement."Mick Yates, author of artefacts

The poems in this selection reach into the ungraspable realm of the human psyche, our own 'hidden constellations'. Charged with mystery and wonder, they explore the possibility of life being written 'into the white hot revelations' of stars; the hidden territory into which paintings lure you; the power of dreams to magnify and distort. Lyrically aware of the natural world, they are haunted by ecological loss and disaster, wondering how a post- apocalyptic people would remember earth when it is considered 'weakness to look back'. Mourning the futility of war they envision 'a land where the oak and the pomegranate intertwine' and look ultimately to the hope that lies in new life."In Crossing the Night Frances-Anne King trains her visionary, art-lover's gaze onto outer worlds of past, present and future to show how they shape and reflect inner worlds. We see a cloud brachiosaurus 'loping the sky's vast plain', a child 'whose kingdom was an oak wood' now a young man lost to the war and his mother who has only the quilt she has sewn him to bury on the Welsh hillside, the settlers of the Red Planet who are only allowed to dream of the Earth they once loved. Physical, philosophical, architectural, alive with startling imagery and often intensely moving, Crossing the Night is full of wonder. I read it several times with astonishment and admiration."Jenny Lewis"Frances-Anne King's poetry is already known and loved for its lyrical tenderness towards friends and strangers, unregarded creatures and distant stars, ruined civilisations and modern cities, the near and the far. In this pamphlet, she shows us how deeply she also cares about the 'hidden constellations' of the human heart, the 'unmapped territory' of human love in all its forms. The language is still lyrical but it has acquired an elegiac directness which accords with the poet's sense that 'our light is brief'. Even a fleeting dream can 'leave you wounded for days', while an awareness of the world's fragility grows and grows into 'the hidden apprehension-blossom'. And yet the poet holds out the promise of hope, frail as a flower, bright as a star, for us to contemplate and take our own comfort from."Lesley Saunders

"Great news! A collection of poems from one of poetry's greatest friends, curator of the wonderful Poetry Festival on the Lake at Orta San Giulio. At first glance I am dazzled by phrases such as:silvered with sea verses,the minims and trebles of fish"Gillian Clarke'This is a very fine small collection by a poet who deserves to be much better known. Perhaps she wonders, as many of us do, "What is my work really worth in the overall scheme of things? Would contemporary literature be any the poorer without my poems?" I believe it certainly would. If this sounds extravagant, go and read Lament for an illegal immigrant.'Michael Swan

Fall, Nigel Kent's latest pamphlet, eavesdrops on an affair that has devastating consequences for a marriage of ten years. This narrative sequence of poems forensically dissects the complex nature of love. There are moments of thrill and exhilaration, of course, but there are also moments of recklessness, delusion, guilt, shame, loss, despair, madness and more, all captured in authentic, profoundly human poems. Read and be moved."This is Nigel Kent at his best - taking a story and weaving it through delicious images. Within minutes I found myself completely immersed in this love affair and its consequences. As always, Kent's probing words take you to the heart of the relationship. Written in two parts, with the stage director interspersed between poems, the collection is breathtaking. The voices of the three characters are strong and each story conveys a deep-seated sadness. Highly recommended."Kate Young, poet"'The waste of a marriage dropped into bin bags by the back door' or a 'vast, inviting emptiness into which I stepped with arms stretched out like wings'. Nigel Kent's dramatization of the break-up of a marriage gives a voice to each of his protagonists while an omniscient narrator records the relentless flow of time, of a clock 'whose hands spin backwards to that moment which cannot be undone'. It is this 'moment' and its resulting guilt and depression which Kent depicts in searing detail. The poem has such a powerful emotional pull that I found myself with tears in my eyes when reading the final line. Nigel Kent's innovative and memorable account of an old, old story, will make you want to read it again, straight away."Ellie Rees, poet"This is no ordinary presentation of an extra-marital affair, but one seen through the eyes of all three parties involved. Nigel Kent explores in depth a whole plethora of emotions: collusion, euphoria, post-coital guilt, deception, regret and heartbreak, all painted with consummate skill and sensitivity. This is a masterful portrayal of deceit with its gut-wrenching exploration of the (often unseen) consequences of a seemingly harmless dalliance. I thoroughly recommend it. It is a must-have for every poetry lover's bookshelf, one to which you will return time and again."Margaret Royall, poet/author"Fall is an unusual and exciting collection. Nigel Kent enters the heads of three characters involved in the breakdown of a marriage with sympathy and understanding. He also uses short single stanza poems to set the scene and carry the narrative forward. This is a collection that is difficult to put down. His skill with rhythm, images and line endings ensures that it is pure poetry. "The clock hands sweep up time," is just one of many beautiful images which will stay with his readers long after they have finished the book."Jenny Hamlett, poet

In My Life as a Time Traveller, Oz Hardwick pushes the idea of memoir into dazzlingly unexpected territories, foregrounding pattern and imaginative perception over anecdote.Oz is known for prose poems that are "relentlessly thoughtful about the nature of time," and which "play with time ... with highly compelling, disconcerting results," and has recently been described as "an Einstein of prose poetry, reconfiguring our understanding of time and space". The 18 Discrete Fragments in this poetry sequence mix past, present, and future into a heady alchemical compound that distils each moment into the gold of sand, egg yolk, or a falling autumn leaf.The Surrealist dream logic of the poems here is born from reflection on the nature of the self within the world when one is revealed to be one's own most unreliable narrator. In a rare instance of explanation, Oz reveals that "one of the more interesting/infuriating ways in which my brain works is that I don't have a neurotypical perception of linear time: it is, as the film says, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and these poems offer vignettes of that experience."Precisely focused, and shaped with Oz's customary mastery of craft, these poems are personal on the molecular level at which, paradoxically, individuality becomes universal. Together, they amount to a memoir of now, in which "now" is the fourteenth century, where a dodo that grew from a seed, grown weary of browsing art galleries, slips his half-forgotten children from the freezer, and contemplates retirement. We've all been there, and in this wildly implausible collection, Oz presents an irrefutable case which suggests that we're all there now.

Transformations is an ekphrastic collection of poems all drawing inspiration from the work of the artist, Elisabeth Frink. Elisabeth Frink spent the final ten years of her life in Dorset and her work is transformative. She explored the relationship between humans and animals and the complexities of simply being human. The poems in this pamphlet are a response to Frink's explorations of these themes.

Miniskirts in The Waste Land, set in Notting Hill and India, is an elegy for the late 60s/early 70s. In flamboyant contrast to the drab reality of post WW2 Britain, the air in these years of emerging counterculture, the era of the pill, throbbed with the scents and sounds of youth, the blazing hues of psychedelia. These poems portray a young woman's search for self-knowledge, and love. But the heady freedom of the sexual revolution masks a darker side: a fear of loneliness, the realities of the Vietnam war. Along the way, she discovers the joys and disappointments of young love, explores the 'queendom' of motherhood, has a taste of her inner power till, in the end, the 'jangled' voices from her past 'fade' along with 'voices of the jungle'. Peace, however transient, descends upon her.Miniskirts in The Waste Land offers, for the curious, a glimpse into this vanished world. And for those who were there, the tantalising ghost of Patchouli scent and incense."Pratibha Castle's Waste Land, like that other, read in English class by the pamphlet's convent school-educated speaker, is a multi-faceted landscape of people and place, snapshots of brief connections, lives held taut by fear and loneliness. From the wide-eyed, 'skank of damp' bedsit realities of a young woman adrift in late '60s/early '70s London, to the squalor of an escaped-to India, Castle uses vivid, unforgettable sensory imagery to release from the page a psychedelic blast of protest, betrayal, ''Nam nightmares', fleeting intimacy, loss. Her eye for key details is pin-sharp: in London, unwelcoming women with 'pecking gossip' have 'Princess Margaret scarves / knotted tight as knuckles'; in India, with its rats and 'roaches, beggars' wrists are 'a bangle-clash of need'. But Castle luminously relieves the tense and the tawdry with her deft depiction of tender moments: where lovers 'licked sugar trickles / off each other's chins', and, in Leaven, an exquisite hymn to pregnancy, a woman 'Coaxes loaves / out of their tins / as if from cradles'. This is language, poetry, to reach out and touch, taste, savour."Dawn Gorman"Here is a vivid and sensual poetry of short lines and sharp images that carry the fortunate reader all the way from Portobello Market to Mahatma Gandhi Road in India - 'the air a ferment// of patchouli, rotten apples'. These poems are vividly-drawn snapshots of a time, and mind, and place - and I am very much drawn in."Jean Atkin

Progress spinning ahead of usbut just out of reachWhy do we struggle to move forward, to accept change? Zoetrope is a journey through the circles we trace, the detours and the repetitive movements we find safety in. The pamphlet explores how fear and an unwillingness to examine our own behaviour or to question those in power combine to hold us back. The poems examine themes as varied as sexual violence, the legacy of colonialism and the growing influence of technology on our lives. Zoetrope plots our attempts to make progress and our failures as snapshots on a spinning cylinder, and then portrays us breaking out in search of hope."It is a stirring experience to read Zoetrope. Each turn of the page brings something new and unexpected. Otto's lens on the world reveals both the sinister and the sublime, in poems overflowing with wit and imagination."Rebecca Goss"Emily Dickinson would love the work of Hilary Otto - an exciting emerging poet who fulfils Dickinson's directive to 'tell the truth but tell it slant'. Never prosaic or obvious, Hilary Otto's collection of startlingly original, inventive, visionary poems is informed by a quick wit, social and political consciousness and a lively, and far-reaching intelligence. Hilary is a master of dazzling and affecting imagery and speaks her truth with eloquence, insight and encyclopaedic knowledge of a wide variety of subjects. She is equally adept when writing about the arts as the sciences. A must-read by an exciting contemporary poet."Anna Saunders Founding Director, Cheltenham Poetry Festival"The speakers in Hilary Otto's bold and unsettling debut pamphlet spin toward and away from the reader with the unnerving brilliance of hallucinations. Here are human voices trapped in patterns inflicted on them by the powerful voices terrified but 'capable / of extraordinary things'. Otto's thrilling phrase-making generates intensity and momentum, the reader pulled through a labyrinth of dark corridors lit by metaphor, the overall effect a hymn to the relentless power of imagination: 'The more we mustn't be, / the more we become.'"John McCullough

"Julie Stevens speaks with the true voice of feeling, wrestling hope out of pain and celebrating every small instance of joy. Her experience of long-term illness draws her into many unlit areas of emotion. She illuminates these dark places with subtle cascades of metaphor. She is a genuine poet."- Steve Logan, musician and poet"It's not just the striking images, the startling turns of phrase that are so arresting within Julie's poetry - it's the bold and candid detailing of her battle with illness that make the poems impossible to put down. And despite the sometimes painful subject matter, these are poems of such resilience and bravery that they are energizing and empowering to read and full of an unextinguishable vitality."- Anna Saunders, Founding Director Cheltenham Poetry Festival"'I am here and I am holding the dark.' This collection is a glimpse behind the everyday movement we take for granted. Julie Stevens has identified the wolf in the darkness and here, in these poems where brave lays down next to broken, she is willing to step outside, no matter how difficult that is. There is no sugar coating here; the truth weighs heavy and the wind mocks but the honesty etched into every line reveals itself, as a resilience that will not be simply blown away."- Damien B Donnelly, poet and podcast producer"Throughout this collection, we're granted a rare and precious intimacy - drawn time and again into the poet's vulnerability and fragility, yet these poems sing with fierce strength and determination. This is a powerful, incisive and devastatingly honest collection; Julie's gentle voice pierces the reader time and time again, but she never shuts us out. We're drawn with her through each difficult moment and through each soaring dream. It's exquisite."- Anne McMaster

In a realm that lies between worlds, this collection of poems beguiles with tales of spent and unspent desire, made and unmade wishes, promises broken and fulfilled. Time and memory merge in a fabric which clothes the dreamer with supernatural gifts, offering a journey into an interior world electric with possibilities. The reader may dream with the poet in moments of subtle reflection and joyous epiphany."This is an eclectic collection deeply concerned with perceptions of time, self and memory. Motivated by current and ancient periods; anecdotal and historical, the poetry engages with diverse material ranging from contemporary news reports and popular culture to myths from the Graeco-Roman and Celtic traditions. These are interweaved and reframe understandings of myth and mysticism between different worlds. The world of this writing takes us through epiphanies and imaginative journeys over land, in the air and at sea. Particularly satisfying is Barton's aesthetic in raising questions of consciousness in the existential void left by the post-truth era."Dr Lauren Clark, lecturer, Integrative Centre for Humanities."Elizabeth Barton is a painter of remarkable talent. Just as her paintings show an extraordinary ability to turn the mundane into the surreal, so Barton's poetry shines a light on the dingy, the ordinary and mundane, and turns it into gold. Her poetry reverberates like music and we sing and dance with her. Barton, the artist, has an eye for detail and colour and shows the same mastery over words. Her subtle control over her images of colour, juxtaposition, form, playfulness, wildness and freedom seduce us into her world. This is what poetry is; the music, the taste and the colour of words. Barton's poetry is luminous."Jenny Harrison, author of Out of Poland and The Ninth Candle."Elizabeth Barton's poetry is lush - decadent, even - crammed full of bizarre, colourful imagery that plucks you out of the ordinary and whirls you into the arcane. She also has a wicked sense of humour."Josie Ashworth, Poet and Librarian, Te Aroha Library.

Of Gone Fox is a cycle of 13 poems held between two photos of a dead fox...Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist, and speaks & writes in various ways. He has published with various English poetry houses including Intergraphia, Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, Nine Arches Press, Shearsman Books, and also with with Middle Creek in the United States. Mark was brought up on a farm in south Leicestershire, and from a young age has been a keen experiencer of 'place'. Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat, on a cut just off the river Soar just north of Leicester. He tweets poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here:https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.comLouis Goodwin is currently in his final year of actor training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He is an experienced street-performer of close-up magic, mentalism and sleight of hand, and he has been 'dabbling' in poetry, prose and dramatic writing from an early age. Louis enjoys walking his collie dog along field-edges in Leicestershire.Nikki Clayton is an inveterate photographer of lost and found objects and creatures. Her photos have featured on the covers of a number of poetry collections published by Longbarrow Press, Shearsman Books, Nine Arches Press and Leafe Press. She has also collaborated with Longbarrow Press to exhibit her work in various locations, alongside written and spoken poetry. She lives on a boat with a poet, in Leicestershire.

A collection of poetry from one of the UK's foremost practitioners. This is a book that you will treasure for years to come and that will sit proudly on you, and your friends, for you should buy each of them a copy, shelves

The second edition of 'A Restricted View From Under The Hedge' again showcases some amazing poets and poetry.The full line-up for the magazine is:Poetry from: Chen Chen & Sam Herschel Wein Rohini Kapil Tawnya Renelle Phil Hawtin Peter J. King Kristin Garth Zoe Mitchell Sophie Hannah S.A. Leavesley Bill Herbert Sarah Bigham Jane Burn Nick Toczek Rachel Burns Georgina Titmus Megan Falley Johanna Boal Moniza Alvi Beth McDonough Jonathan Jones Nigel Kent Mimi Khalvati Melissa Fu Sanjeev Sethi Joe Williams Anna Saunders Matt Duggan Raine Geoghegan Martin Malone Lucía Orellana Damacela Bhanu Kapil Eileen Carney Hulme Ali Jones Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon Jennie E. Owen Serena Mayer Mary GilonneArticles: Chen Chen Talking to Victoria Richards Sue Burge A Writing Cloud Rebecca Sandeman Moon City Paul Wooldridge Don't Fear the Meter Billy Bragg A Lover Sings Zoe Mitchell Talking Poets Raine Geoghegan Hotchiwitchi/Hedgehog Kristin Garth Pink Plastic House Laurie Hall Hogging The Hooch Brian Patten Talking Poets Phil Vernon What Are You Reading? Mick Yates the art of conversation Jenna Plewes Against The Pull of Time Elisabeth Alain Talking Poets Helen Calcutt Unable Mother David Mark Williams The Odd Sock Exchange Moose Postcards From The Hedge

A Restricted View From Under The Hedge (In The Springtime) is a stunning collection of some of the finest contemporary poetry. Including new work from Chen Chen, D.M. Thomas, Robert Sheppard, Sophie Hannah, Mimi Khalvati, Bill Herbert, Megan Falley, Moniza Alvi, Sanjeev Sethi and Eileen Myles. Additionaly, it features,Brian Patten Talking to Eileen Carney Hulme Alison Lock Penny Rimbaud Paul Moss Matt Duggan Patricia Oxley Charlotte Begg Sandra Beasley S.A. Leavelsey Isabelle Kenyon Artwork From Moose