"Physick is a book of poetry that sears and coaxes and it could have been written by no one apart from the scholar, poet and elder that is Pete Hay. No one else takes the temperature of this island like him and no one else uses Tasmania as such an effective prism through which to consider human nature. Physick is a book of transcendent poetry which helps us understand not only place but the vagaries and passions of the human condition. It should be prescribed reading for all of us." – Rachel Edwards, The Australian

Bind: paperback

Pages: 156

Dimensions: 135 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 10-10-2023

This mini anthology is a celebration of the rich variety of ways in which we get ourselves from A to B. A long distance walk, a bike ride, a boat trip – all are here in language that captures the thrill of being en route. We meet cyclists pedalling with panniers around eastern France. Then there’s a rowdy train journey from Barrow to Sheffield; the passengers may be raucous but what is relished is the train’s “relentless pressing on”. Sheenagh Pugh’s poem wonders what might happen if a road had a mind of its own. Then again: “Who wants to know a story’s end, or where a road will go?” from ‘What if this road’ by Sheenagh Pugh Whether you’re a seasoned explorer or an armchair traveller, these poems offer the delight and excitement of being on the way to somewhere else. Poems by Jean Atkin, Jo Bell, Geoffrey Chaucer, David Constantine, John Foggin, Norman MacCaig, Michael McCarthy, Kim Moore, Sheenagh Pugh and Rabindranath Tagore.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 163 x 217 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2022

From African Wild Dog through to Zebra, there's a poem for all the alphabet animals! Tough toothed fluffy fringed hay muncher crunching on sunshine strands. Carrot wisher, lip curler begging for treats. Curious explorer dust roller tickling the sky with hooves. Children carrier tail swisher fuss seeker hoping for human hands to rub behind ears... Donkey ;)

Bind: paperback

Pages: 96

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2024

During the Covid-19 pandemic, eighteen thousand uncrossable kilometres lay between poet Majella Cullinane in Aotearoa New Zealand and her mother in Ireland, a distance unbridgeable even by phone as Cullinane’s mother’s language was lost to dementia. Meantime calls and keens across this terrible distance. With attentiveness, tenderness and extraordinary vulnerability, these poems speak directly to personal experience while also addressing a wider world shadowed and altered by illness, where everything once familiar and coherent is disintegrating, in flux, uncertain and strange. These poems are works of vigil and devotion, breathed into existence by a daughter who could not be at the bedside of her beloved, dying parent. Personal and universal in its themes, the poems in Meantime possess a gravitas born of sorrow, steeped in love. A warm and loving conversation about memory and forgetting, and a celebration of the power of voice to connect and heal, this is a collection for our times.

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 23-05-2024

Michael Giacon's first volume of poetry, Undressing In Slow Motion, has Giacon undressing at the turn of each page in a dishevelment of past, present and beyond. We travel with Giacon as he negotiates death, life and love while reconciling his deep Pākehā-Italian Catholic roots with his emerging selves and communities. The work explores a range of styles, including Giacon’s signature greyscale, where possible alternatives and different meanings offer us several dialogues at the same time. Giacon presents a sensitive undressing of self, sexuality, relationships and nature. Poet Siobhan Harvey says: “This stunning first collection abounds with love, tenderness, friendship, loss, the delights of pet ownership and swimming, and the sustenance provided by writing. Throughout, Giacon reminds us of the profundities found in small moments, and the delicate understanding offered by life's major events.”

Bind: paperback

Pages: 99

Dimensions: 200 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 06-05-2024

In this wonderful mini-anthology of poems celebrating brothers (a companion to Ten Poems about Sisters) we meet brothers of all ages and of all shapes and sizes, including the brother who: “has made, out of petrol and hormones, a little world for himself, a paradise of hang-gliders and cars;” from ‘My Lost Brother’ by Ben Scammell. There’s also a young brother who loves riding down the stairs on a tea-tray and teenage brothers who are so alike they even smell the same. There are brothers who grow up and disappear into a new life, living on vividly in the memories of those left behind. The relationship with a brother can be a complex one, and these poems explore those joys and challenges in fascinating ways. But most of all they reflect the abiding love we feel for a brother and show how this can enrich a life. Poems by Matthew Dickman, Jonathan Edwards, Lavina Greenlaw, Joanne Limburg, Hannah Lowe, Rebecca McClanahan, Rob Miles, Mary O’Donnell, Ben Scammell and Floyd Skloot.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-10-2017

INCLUDES POSTCARDS Kindness can be an underestimated virtue in our increasingly hectic and impersonal world. It is a word that we use most often in our conversations with young children when we tell them to be kind to a fellow creature or a new friend. These generous poems remind us that kindness can take many forms and that a kind gesture doesn’t have to be either time-consuming or complicated. On the contrary: “Sometimes a sober voice is enough to calm the waters & drive away the false witnesses,” from ‘Kindness’ by Yusef Komunyakaa. Edited by Jackie Kay and containing two new poems she has written specially for the anthology, this moving selection is allied to a compelling cause. ‘Felix’s Campaign of Kindness’ was instigated by the mother of Felix Alexander, a 17-year-old boy who took his own life after years of online bullying. The pamphlet is dedicated to the memory of Felix and contains the inspirational open letter written by his mother after his death. Jackie Kay is one of the foremost poets writing in Britain today. She has published numerous poetry collections and a memoir, Red Dust Road, about her quest to find her birth parents. She was the third modern Makar, the Scottish Poet Laureate. Included are two special edition postcards featuring poems by Olga Dermott-Bond and Zoë Green, who were the winners in our Kindness Poem Competition. Poems by Fleur Adcock, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ian Duhig, Sarah Howe, Jackie Kay, Yusef Komunyakaa, Norman MacCaig, Sylvia Plath, Rabindranath Tagore and Kae Tempest.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 28

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2023

We couldn’t survive without hope – that light at the end of the tunnel which seems to promise ‘this will pass’ when times are hard. These poems offer hope in a whole range of guises – from the uplift of the first signs of spring to the infectious optimism of a child who believes he will live for ever if he eats his greens. There’s also a poem in which a grandmother’s words become a precious talisman: “…empty your paradise onto a desk: your white sands, green hills and fresh fish. Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.” from ‘A Portable Paradise’ by Roger Robinson. Each of these poems is a little chink of light – a reminder that a moment of joy and consolation is always just around the corner. Poems by Fleur Adcock, Sujata Bhatt, Arthur Hugh Clough, Katie Dunstan, Kerry Hardie, Winifred Holtby, Roy Marshall, Paula Meehan, Roger Robinson, Laura Theis and Walt Whitman.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-12-2022

Sunshine and showers, cuckoos, frogs, daffodils and cherry blossom…. Poets writing about spring certainly have no shortage of material. Our selection of poems takes in many of these yearly delights. There are contemporary voices – a poem in which a dog sniffs around a city park and enjoys the new smells, and another where an “immortal frog” seems to promise the speaker fresh hope and a return to good health. In a poem from the nineteenth century, spring is a time of renewal when the world is restored to its original beauty: “What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning…” from ‘Spring’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins. This delightful mini-anthology provides a taste of the countless ways in which this most uplifting of seasons has been celebrated in verse over the centuries. Poems by Thomas Carew, John Clare, Nichola Deane, Emily Dickinson, Valerie Gillies, Gerard Manley Hopkins, AE Housman, Edna St Vincent Millay, Jessica Mookherjee and Alicia Ostriker.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2020

There seem to be fewer poems about summer than about other seasons. Perhaps the impulse to be outdoors when the weather is at its best goes against the inward mood that writing poems requires. This makes poetry about summer all the more glorious – each poem in this mini-anthology is like a rare, bright jewel that shines with the season’s own brief intensity: “Summer was wealthy with a daze of suntraps, Daffodil-spitting, sumptuous. Everywhere Ours for the taking.” from ‘Woodniche’ by Aidan Carl Mathews. The selection takes us into gardens, fields, forests and up onto city rooftops – sharing an exuberant delight in those precious few months when the natural world seems to wear its heart on its sleeve. Poems by Fiona Benson, Louise Glück, Choman Hardi, Jane Kenyon, DH Lawrence, Norman MacCaig, Aidan Carl Mathews, Isaac Rosenberg, Naomi Shihab Nye and Edward Thomas.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2020