Victoria Gatehouse, The Mechanics of Love - explores the impact of medicine on personal experiences and the human condition. As both biochemist and poet, Victoria Gatehouse is uniquely positioned to examine everything from mechanical heart valves and folklore to her experiences of an 80s childhood and being a mother with non-sentimental, scientific, yet tender scrutiny.
Emily Cotterill, The Day of the Flying Ants - about home and leaving home. Much of this entertaining pamphlet focuses on finding, losing, and loving a sense of place. Ants fly when they’re compelled to leave home, when they’ve grown up, when there’s no place in the nest anymore. Whether in Derbyshire or Wales, these well-observed poems find their own place in an odd but familiar world.
Thirza Clout, Aunts Come Armed with Welsh Cakes - In this moreish collection welsh cakes come to represent secrets and things which remain unsaid in an atmosphere of dark domesticity. Nevertheless, Thirza Clout finds humour and delight in the absurdities of ‘normal life’.
Faith Lawrence, Sleeping Through - Heavenly lidos, the siren call of the Doctor Who theme tune, the tender melancholy of early motherhood - all these feature in Faith Lawrence' poems which hold ham sandwiches, and salted caramel ice-cream together with unfashionable abstractions like ‘death’ and ‘probability’.