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Verve Poetry Press Submissions Window: An Interview with Stuart Bartholomew

It’s that time of year again! Yes, VERVE Poetry Press are currently open for submissions until the end of May 2022. To make sure everyone’s on the same page (haha) we’re dusting of an interview with Verve founder and editor Stuart Bartholomew – updated with all the info you need this year.

What is he looking for in a manuscript? Can you submit more than once? What about languages other than English? All is revealed below…

First, the basics: when, where and how can people submit their work to the press?

Our submissions are going to be open for the whole of May 2022: That’s midnight on Sunday 1st until midnight on Tuesday 31st. This time we’re looking for full collections AND pamphlets. We want complete manuscripts although we will consider high quality drafts that are almost there.

You can submit by emailing us at mail@vervepoetrypress.com, with the manuscript as an attached file titled with both your name and the provision title, so: AuthorName_TitleOfManuscript.

In addition to the manuscript itself, we’ll want a one-page (and only one-page, mind you) document detailing your poetic journey so far – we want to know your favourite poetry books, your favourite performers, your favourite events attended (remote or otherwise) alongside a full list of workshops attended, publishing history and readings you’ve given, although it matters less if you don’t have answers for those last three.

We know a thing or two about inspring events...

Here is a good point as any to make clear that we know there are all sorts of factors that can limit access to physical poetry books, performances and workshops and this should in no way be a barrier to applying; tell us instead about online readings and events you’ve attended and enjoyed, and about which of the mountains of free online poems you’ve read, loved and been influenced by!

Finally we want to know the details of the ambitions you have for the book you hope to make, and what things you intend to do personally (outside of submitting it to us) to help it reach a wide audience. We’re an ambitious but still small press and every book’s success is a result of collaboration between us and the author.

And when and how can people expect a response?

The plan is to get back to everyone within eight weeks of the window closing. That gives us enough time to consider everything and make some inevitably difficult decisions. We’re not able to give individual feedback to everybody that submits, for the simple reason of time constraints.

Brilliant. So, logistics aside, what are you looking for in these manuscripts? What are the kinds of poetry that are most likely to make it onto the Verve publishing schedule?

'Submissions must be excellent, generous, open-minded, ambitious and informed.'

If you know us at all, you will know the answer to this. Like our sister festival, we have a love and respect for poetry in all its forms and from all sources. We love poetry designed for the page that is read-out-able and poetry designed to perform that is readable in book form. We love poetry shows, long narrative poems, short quirky poems, one poem manuscripts, seventy poem manuscripts, dramatic poems, quiet poems, free-form poems, fully formed poems, heavily edited poems, poems written in one go. But they must be excellent, generous, open-minded, ambitious and informed.

I don’t want anyone to feel like we’re not interested in ‘their kind of poetry’ but I do want poetry that has an understanding of itself and the context it lives in.

Recent additions to our pantheon! Could you join them?

QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS

When will successful manuscripts  be published?

Of the manuscripts we choose from this submissions window, some will be published in 2023 and more in 2024. We’re reducing the frequency of our submissions windows now, so the next opportunity to submit will be in Spring 2024!

Can people submit if they’ve already submitted to Verve in the past?

Yes! Not only that, but they can submit more than one manuscript at a time, if they have that much poetry knocking around.

What about if they’re also submitting elsewhere?

Fine by me – they’ll just have to keep me informed of any updates in that regard.

What if the work is previously published?

If poems have been published in magazines or anthologies before that’s not a problem, as long as the collection as a whole hasn’t ever been published as a complete work.

How do you feel about non-English language poetry?

We’re really interested in manuscripts that involve more than one language – I’d say it’d have to be at least 50% English: bi- and multi-lingual poetry is absolutely a yes.

Do you have to be from the Midlands to submit?

Not at all. Like our sister festival, our roots will always be in Birmingham but we are proud and excited to have our doors open to poets far and wide – we’ve published poets from all over the world!

Is there a submission fee?

No. We want to remove as many barriers as possible from the submitting process, so we haven’t charged people for submitting their work.

Do people have to buy a book from you to submit?

No, there’s no requirement and no enforcer going door to door checking your bookshelves. Although it does make sense that you should know who we are and the work we publish – and in my humble, unbiased opinion, we do have great books that you would probably enjoy if you did buy them.

Any last words for people thinking about submitting?

Just that we’d love to see your stuff. It was amazing to read through our last window’s material and I’m really looking forward to seeing what we get. If you’re serious about poetry, this is absolutely for you – show us what you’ve got!

So there you have it! (Almost) everything you need to know about submitting to Verve Poetry Press in one place. If you or anyone you know is interested, be sure to follow us on socials for all the updates and get those manuscripts ready!

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In Conversation with Phoebe Stuckes

After being blown away by her reading at VERVE 2022, we had to reach out to brilliant VPP poet, Phoebe Stuckes. Read below for her thoughts on her party girl persona, writing during a pandemic why we just can’t log off of social media, even when it’s making us miserable…

Hello Phoebe! How are you doing? What have you been up to since we last heard from you? It was brilliant to hear you read at VERVE Poetry Festival in February!

Hi! I’m doing okay, not a great deal to report, just writing and working. I’m delighted that it’s Spring as the Winter makes me morose. Thanks! I had a great time performing at Verve and it was my first in-person reading in two years!

Lucky us! We’re honoured to have been your return to readings – hopefully the first of many!

Phoebe read the title poem from her pamphlet on the VERVE Stage in February

The One Girl Gremlin is your second pamphlet, and your first since your full-length collection Platinum Blonde. What is unique about this project compared to your previous writings?

I didn’t really set out to write a complete sequence. I just wanted something to do really, I wanted to write something and I’d been reading a lotof prose poems so I think that influenced the style of the poems. My friend Em Meller pointed out that Platinum Blonde is mainly about external events whereas in The One Girl Gremlin there’s a lot of dream sequences and contemplation; I think it’s definitely more dreamlike. 

My approach was the same in that I just try and write a lot of poems and then I usually understand the sequence only in retrospect, at the time of writing I’m too close to it. I have this problem where whenever I try and plan a piece of writing before I write it I always vere off in the other direction, so no I’ve never written anything that I set out to write!

We published Phoebe’s pamphlet The One Girl Gremlin in September, her first since her full length collection Platinum Blonde (Bloodaxe Books, 2020)

“Here, Phoebe Stuckes’ trademark poems of high humour and hubris take on a dreamier, more abstract, quality. Perhaps the ‘wise-cracking party girl’ of her earlier work is sensing that, for a while at least, the party is postponed. There isn’t much worth staying up late for any more in these poems. Instead, our character lies awake in bed long into the night or wakes up into a pre-dawn world they barely recognise. And the strange new rural setting they wake to is inviting and also threatening and therefore not to be trusted.”

Very relateable! Speaking of things not going to plan… how was your experience of writing and releasing Gremlin affected by the pandemic?

I think it forced me to write outside of my usual themes because my usual subjects; nightlife, intimacy, etc. weren’t available to me anymore. Everything I would usually have done around the release was moved online, I also haven’t been doing many in-person readings even though they seem to be starting up again, so I haven’t had as many opportunities to put it in people’s hands as I would like.

There’s a lot of reference to being visibly online in these poems, as well as those that more broadly explore a sense of living performatively. Is that something you set out to interrogate with this pamphlet?

I suppose so; I’ve written a lot in my other poetry about femininity and the self being constructed. I think in Platinum Blonde there was a strong persona and in The One Girl Gremlin the persona slightly dropped because I didn’t feel like I had an audience anymore. I think people of my generation have a really high level of anxiety around being surveilled because so much of our life is online and will probably be there forever in some form or other.

I’m interested in that because I loathe it and still participate in it, partly out of a fear of missing out. During the last lockdown I was living alone and I wanted to tune out so badly but I was like if I log off it’ll be just me here and that’ll be horrible.
 
That’s an ambivalence a lot of people share, for sure.

There are a few of your poems that get shared a lot online – do you think there’s something about your poetry that’s particularly retweetable?

God I hope not! There’s really no telling what poems people will share around and which they’ll basically ignore so I try not to think about it too much. I like the attention obviously, and it’s a good way to reach new readers but I don’t think about it too much.

Finally, are you working on anything new at the moment? Are there any upcoming projects you’d like to plug?

Nothing that isn’t top secret. I’m running a workshop on Ekphrastic poetry for The Poetry Business for a second time on the 25th of May, you can book tickets for that here:

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Sounds amazing! Thanks so much for talking to us!

For more from Phoebe, check out her pamphlet The One Girl Gremlin, or read more about her on her author page here!

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EVEN MORE Spring Releases at Verve Poetry Press

Your eyes do not decieve you! We’ve got even more amazing Spring collections ready to order – details of these brilliant books and their wonderful authors below.

For more on these and our upcoming releases, check out our Coming Soon page here.

Kathy Pimlott – the small manoeuvres

apr 22

Pimlott is my favourite flâneuse, conjuring place like no one else, with an immaculate eye for the juicy, telling detail. In these clear-sighted poems she confronts aging and lockdowns, both bringing a world: ‘wilder and straitened / like the bins.’ I love Pimlott’s cast of memorable characters; her tinder-dry wit; her hard-won knowledge that: ‘what matters now is grace on a wire, enough sleep.’

Clare Pollard

Kathy Pimlott

Kathy was born in Nottingham, in the shadow of Player’s cigarette factory but has spent her adult life in London, the last 40 or so years in Covent Garden, specifically, in Seven Dials. She has had a rag-bag career in social work, community activism, arts television and artist development and now works on community-led public realm projects. She has published two pamphlets with The Emma Press, Elastic Glue​ (2019) and Goose Fair Night (2016). Her work has appeared in Magma, Mslexia, Brittle Star, The North, Poem, ​The Rialto and Under the Radar.

Kayleigh Campbell – Matryoshka

apr 22

Matryoshka represents the feminist notion that females are human beings with agency; it presents the good, the bad and the incomprehensible. A mixture of confessional and imagined writing, it explores motherhood, love, death and violence. There are saints and sinners, witches, celebrities and mischievous cats against a backdrop of Russian folklore and magical realism. It is haunting and melancholic, unsettling and dark, but there are also little pockets of comedy and relief. The poems take the reader on an unpredictable trail through the enchanting forest of the female.

Kayleigh Campbell

Kayleigh Campbell finished her PhD at The University of Huddersfield in March 2022 and is a member of the Editorial Board for Grist Books. Her poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Rialto, Stand Magazine & The High Window; she was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2021. In 2019, her pamphlet Keepsake was published by Maytree Press.

Sarah James – Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic

may 22

‘Sarah James’ Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic compellingly conveys the journey of a life pervaded by type one diabetes and the myriad struggles of that hidden disability [...] Always engaging and often moving, James’ poems deftly immerse as well as inform, urging a deep appreciation of life’s plenty, “breath[ing] in the sky.’
Carrie Etter

Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic is award-winning poet Sarah James’s exploration of 40 years living with type one diabetes, a life-threatening autoimmune condition that is now treatable, but remains incurable. The collection tracks her personal journey from diagnosis, age six, to adulthood, including the high and the low points, as well as the further long-term health risks lurking in the background. These are poems of pain, but also of love and beauty, taking in motherhood, aging and establishing self-identity in a constantly updating world.

The route to some kind of acceptance and belonging may be troubled by ‘trying to escape’ but it also ‘holds | more light than your eye | will ever know’

Sarah James

Sarah is a poet, fiction writer, journalist, occasional playwright, photographer, poetryfilm maker and arts reviewer, as well as editor at V. Press. Author of four poetry collections, three poetry pamphlets, a poetry-play, an ACE-funded multi-media hypertext poetry narrative > Room and two novellas, she also enjoys artistic commissions, mentoring and working as a writer in residence, and was delighted to be The High Window Resident Artist for 2019!

Georgina Wilding – Hag Stone

may 22

Hag Stone is an exploration of the ways in which working class girlhood, broken homes, and sex interact, with a realisation that each is seemingly interconnected in more ways than one.

The poems in this manuscript take rigid childhood events and reclaim the narrative through aggrandized surrealism, making it so that the harsh realities of some of these events are suddenly mutable against the whimsy, and in some places, desperate chaos that occurs in the work.

Georgina Wilding

Georgina Wilding was crowned Nottingham’s first Young Poet Laureate 2017 – 2019, and Creative Director of Nottingham Poetry Festival until early 2021. In 2015 she set up the poetry publishing house, Mud Press. Georgina has featured at events such as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, International Poetry Day:Granada, Sofar Sounds, Bright Spark, Hit the Ode, Straatstheatre Braunschweig and Off Milosz festival in Poland. She has been commissioned by organisations such as The Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio Nottingham. She has been published in literary journals such as The Rialto and Kontent, in magazines such as Pussy Magic, Rebelotte and Left Lion, and in anthologies such as Peace Builders Small Acts of Kindness and Jubilee Press’ The ‘art of Nottingham. She was recently long-listed in the OutSpoken prize for poetry performance category.

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ACROSS BORDERS POETS

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Sonnet L’Abbé grew up in Calgary, rural southern Manitoba, and Kitchener-Waterloo. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet’s Shakespeare. Their styles range from lyric to concrete and experimental, and their themes include racial, national and settler identity, relationship to land, surviving sexual assault, plant knowledge, physiology of music and love. Their influences include M. NourbeSe Phillip, Anne Michaels, Christian Bök, Claudia Rankine, Wislawa Szymborska and Seamus Heaney. They were the editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2014, and their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bp Nichol Chapbook Award. L’Abbé now lives in Nanaimo BC and is a professor at Vancouver Island University.

Ellen Van Neerven (Australia)(they/them) is an award-winning author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage.  van Neerven’s poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020), the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award, is now available.

They are the editor of three anthologies, including the recent Homeland Calling: Words from a New Generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voices .

Roy McFarlane was born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage and has spent most of his years living in Wolverhampton. He has held the roles of Birmingham’s Poet Laureate,  Starbucks’ Poet in Residence, and the Birmingham & Midland Institute’s Poet in Residence. Roy’s writing has appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe, 2012), Filigree (Peepal Tree,  2018) and he is the editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack, 2011). His first full collection of poems, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was published in 2016, followed by The Healing Next Time in 2018, both published by Nine Arches Press. He is the current Canal Laureate.

Hinemoana Baker (New Zealand) is a poet, musician and creative writing teacher. She traces her ancestry from Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa and Ngāi Tahu, as well as from England and Germany (Oberammergau in Bayern). Her previous poetry collections are mātuhi | needle (co-published in 2004 by Victoria University Press and Perceval Press), kōiwi kōiwi (VUP, 2010) and waha | mouth (VUP, 2014). She has edited several online and print anthologies and released several albums of original music and more experimental sound art. She works in English, Māori and more recently German, the latter in collaboration with German poet and sound performer Ulrike Almut Sandig. She is currently living in Berlin, where she was 2016 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer in Residence, and completing a PhD at Potsdam University.

Efe Paul Azino born in Lagos is a Nigerian writer, performance artist and poet, regarded “as one of Nigeria’s leading performance poets.” He has also been regarded as one who has “played a pivotal part in lifting the words from the page and giving them life” in the Nigerian spoken word performance space.

He is the founder and director of the Lagos International Poetry Festival, and the director of poetry at the annual Lagos Book and Art Festival.

In 2015, he published his first collection of poetry titled For Broken Men Who Cross Often, published by Farafina Books. His second poetry collection, The Tragedy of Falling with Laughter Stuck in Your Throat, came out in 2018.

Nafeesa Hamid is a British Pakistani poet, spoken word artist and playwright based in the Midlands. Her work focuses on issues such as mental health, domestic violence, gender, identity and culture. Nafeesa has worked with Apples and Snakes, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG), mac birmingham, Derby Theatre and Beatfreeks. She is also the founder and co-manager of Twisted Tongues and Twisted Tongue Scribble Sessions. 

Her debut collection of poetry Besharam was published in 2018 and was highly commended at the Forward Prize in 2020. A poem from this collection also features in the recently published Forward Poems of the Decade 2011–2020.

Saradha Soobrayen is a creative activist working with poetry, visual arts and live arts.  Born in London of Mauritian parentage, she received a Society of Authors, Eric Gregory Award for Poetry in 2004 Ongoing projects include  ‘Sounds Like Root Shock’ a multidisciplinary poetic inquiry into the depopulation of the Chagos Archipelago. Her latest publication  ‘In Her Deepest Sleep, Madam Lisette Talate Returns to Chagos’ is published by Akashic Books – New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Boxset (Nane). In 2022 she was named in Electricliterature.com ’12 Mauritian women writers you should be reading.’ www.saradhasoobrayen.com

Njeri Wangari. Known more by her trademark ‘The Kenyan Poet’.  Njeri Wangari is arguably Africa’s pioneer poet blogger.  Her journey into poetry began in 2004 as a fledgling writer who was among an emerging breed of African poets riding the crest of a ‘new wave’ of keen interest among Kenyans in ‘spoken word’ performance born with the publication of Kwani! launched by the Binyavanga Wainaina.   She represents Africa’s first generation of contemporary poets and is one of Kenya’s first spoken word artists.

Njeri authored her first anthology, Her book Mines & Mind Fields in 2010.  The volume is an urban blues poetry collection whose 40 poems explore themes on Urban Blues, Love, Identity, Traditions, Cultural changes, Exploitation and Politics among others.

Melizerani T. Selva is a spoken word poet, storyteller and journalist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her rhymes are drawn from her wild curiosity in taboos and all the things her Mother told her not to do. Having been the first Malaysian to speak and perform poetry at Asia’s largest TEDx event, TEDxGateway (Mumbai), she has also gained first runner up at both The National Singapore Slam and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival slam.

Her poems have also seen the prominent stages of Lit Up Singapore, Georgetown Literary Festival, Urbanscapes, Raising The Bar, Melaka International Arts Festival 2014, Cri de Femme International Poetry and Arts Festival 2015 and various literary events in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia and India. Her first book of poems titled ‘Taboo’ made the Top 10 Best-Seller List of Malaysia’s Largest Online Bookstore.

Dzifa Benson is a multi-disciplinary live artist who uses literature as her primary mode of expression. The intersections between science, art, the body and ritual and by the question of who or what is invisible animate Dzifa’s practice. She explores this through poetry, storytelling, theatre, performance, libretti, essay, journalism and a range of other media. She also embraces education, collaboration and participation at the heart of her practice. She is interested site-specific work as well as subverting the use of existing spaces.    

Born in London to Ghanaian parents, Dzifa grew up in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. She has performed her work internationally in many contexts.

ALSO FEATURING Tishani Doshi (India), Alvin Pang (Singapore), Isabelle Baafi (South Africa), Shivanee Ramlochan (Trinidad & Tobago), Nick Makoha (Uganda), Kayo Chingonye (Zambia).

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Spring Releases at Verve Poetry Press

2022 is rolling on and Verve Poetry Press are continuing to work to bring you brilliant work from fantastic poets . To celebrate Spring (we’re ignoring the weather here) we’ve put together a round-up of our recent releases and the details of how you can get your hands on them – enjoy!

For more on these and our upcoming releases, check out our Coming Soon page here.

Peter deGraft-Johnson – A Testament To Life & Death

feb 22

'Exciting, energetic and revolutionary, this is a brilliant and powerful testament to life and death from one the UK’s most prophetic and passionate new voices.'
Salena Godden

The debut pamphlet from The Repeat Beat Poet contains poems written for their utility, their intensity, and their tenderness of spirit. For Peter, these poems function as blessings, memorials, prophecies, and survivor’s guides for soldiering through modern life while being Black in Britain. A writer as comfortable in the cadence of preachers as easily as the flows of rappers, Peter engages his poetry to celebrate life, chronicle suffering, and point towards paths of survival and freedom. 

For the poets who are right with us from graveyard to cradle
For the poems that keep us stable
For the poets everywhere
and the poetry that got them there
This is For The Poets

Peter deGraft-Johnson

Peter deGraft-Johnson is The Repeat Beat Poet, a Hip Hop writer and broadcaster working to capture and extend moments of time, thought, and feeling. Peter, a British-born Ghanaian has performed across the UK and internationally at venues including the Southbank Centre and Ronnie Scotts in London, alongside writers like Margaret Atwood, Salena Godden (FRSL) and Roger Robinson (TS Eliot Prize).

Betty Doyle – Girl Parts

mar 22

’Tender, fierce, full of joy and rage. I wish I’d written so many of these poems and I’m thankful that Betty Doyle has. A must-read.’
Helen Mort

‘In the opening poem of Betty Doyle’s Girl Parts, there is deft shift from tenderness ‘this place again. It’s where I wake up / and recall I have no daughter’ to anger ‘or…turn on the news and feel thankful I have no daughter’. This oscillation between vulnerability and rage is on show throughout this confident collection; a striking exploration of the pain, exhaustion and fear that comes with living in a female body: ‘Sometimes it carries keys / between knuckles’.

Girl Parts is Betty Doyle’s debut pamphlet.

Betty Doyle

Betty Doyleis a poet from Merseyside, UK. Her work has appeared in Flash Journal, Cake, Lunate, Another North, Give Poetry A Chance anthology, and has been accepted by Agenda. She was longlisted for the Mslexia and Poetry Book Society Women Poets Prize in 2018, judged by Carol Ann Duffy. Her debut pamphlet, ‘Girl Parts’, is due to be published by Verve Poetry Press in Spring 2022. She is currently studying for her Creative Writing Ph.D at Manchester Metropolitan University, analysing infertility in contemporary women’s poetry.

Erica Gillingham – The Human Body Is A Hive

mar 22

'Amidst the joys and complexities of queer family-making, Gillingham offers us tender, sensual and profound poems suffused with a tensile strength.’
Mary Jean Chan

Composed in two halves, Erica Gillingham’s The Human Body is a Hive is a playful and observant reconception of queer love and queer family-making. Opening with a shameless celebration of sex and desire, the collection expands the boundaries of love to include friendship, romance, and lifelong partnership. The latter catalogues the cyclical heartbreaks and wonders of fertility treatment through the microscopic lenses of nature, medicine, and art. Both quietly moving and profoundly celebratory, this exciting debut evokes tenderness and resilience.

Erica Gillingham

Erica Gillinghamis a queer poet and writer living in London, England, via Siskiyou County, California. She is a bookseller at Gay’s The Word, Books Editor at DIVAmagazine, and Poetry Editor at The Signal House Edition. Her poetry and essays have been published by Cipher Press, Muswell Press, Monstrous Regiment, Pilot Press, Fourteen Poems, Untitled, Impossible Archetypeand clavmag. The Human Body is a Hiveis her debut pamphlet.

Qudsia Akhtar – Khamoshi

mar 22

“Can one experience diaspora / in the body?” Qudsia Akhtar’s poems are silted with female loss, a kind of silence that builds slowly inside generations of migrant women. Through partition, nationalism, racism, sex and filial duty, these poems ask to whom do we belong if not our selves? A motherland calls to its daughters; an adopted country demands to hear her voice. Akhtar’s language is rich and exact, fearing sentiment, turning on its heel towards a path entirely of its own.   

– Sandeep Parmar 

​‘Qudsia Akhtar’s thrilling debut collection Khamoshi (Silence) traces the complexity of living as a British-Pakistani writer with great courage, integrity and insight. Akhtar’s vision takes in the broader historical perspectives of the trauma of partition and the experiences of racism and sexism while focusing on the embodied tensions of a self that is never fully at ease with itself: ‘I hear / my voice call / my self / imposter.’ In dialogue with Muhammed Iqbal’s philosophical poem The Secrets of the Self, Akhtar asks unflinchingly ‘can I be from here if my roots / lie elsewhere?’, ‘what does the British-Pakistani want?’ ‘can Herstory / be rewritten?’, creating a precisely articulated poetry full of vivid images and passionate thinking. If Akhtar does not shy away from the challenges she presents (‘the chaos of collective identity’), nevertheless this is an enormously optimistic book in which she wears ‘the flag / of hope’ whilst paying homage to ‘all / the voices / in me.’ This is an adept and provocative work which firmly establishes Akhtar as an important new voice for her generation.’  

– Scott Thurston 

Qudsia Akhtar

Qudsia Akhtar is a Manchester-based poet who is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Salford. Her work has appeared in Acumen, The Tower Poetry Anthology, The Ofi Press, and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal.

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Nicki Heinen

“I have had extremely difficult experiences because of my bipolar illness. I write to transmute that experience and try to relay it so that it’s understandable, and to let readers in to a reality that is normally shut away from the world. Writing for me is an act of therapeutic power.”

Nicki Heinen was born in Germany but moved to Birmingham, U.K at the age of 6. She studied English at Girton College, Cambridge University, where she won the Barbara Wrigley Prize for Poetry. Her work has been published in a variety of print and on-line magazines and anthologies, including Magma and Bloodaxe’s Staying Human anthology. She was shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize in 2012, and commended in the Winchester Prize 2018. She founded and hosts Words & Jazz, a spoken word and music night, at the Vortex Jazz Café, London. She lives in North London.

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There May Not Be A Reason Why

Nicki Heinen has been sectioned and hostpitalised under the mental health act on several occasions during her late teen and early adult years. As such, her debut collection contains vivid descriptions of hospitals and her incarceration in them.

She has also experienced long periods of freedom, often chaperoned as it is, by its evil twin brother, loneliness. At times, freedom can be an incarceration of its own.

It is no exaggeration to state that, in this astonishing debut full collection, Nicki is able to show that she has the imagination, the wit and the craft to be able to move almost nimbly beyond all these restrictions in her work, producing poetry of great power and invention. It is poetry of some power that can raise you up and out through the roof of the cage and into the air!

SAMPLE POEM

#MeToo

this skin dries bloodless, underneath a ghost scratches pale-blue                    feather in my mouth turns liquid like tide-pods exploding                                          the sun is absent, a carnation wilts on the grave, a shadow not falling                    no crater so deep as the hold in my mind, filled with all the things I said                  all the things you took, all the things undone                                                      furniture of the bipolar kingdom, stuffed full of dust-mites                              burrowed in like spun tops                                                                                                  is it not an exercise set for the next time?                                                                      no, it’s not                                                                                                                            it’s this moment in which I stand                                                                                        a woman enfettered                                                                                                      stand with feather in mouth                                                                                              my blood on your lips, your face etched in the winter air                                            my head splintering, a silent granade

'In a bracing debut that fully faces up to difficult experience without flinching, it is to Heinen's great credit that what also comes through, time and time again, in the ravenously actual: tactile and sensuous, stubbornly real- the 'piece-of-shit radiator, The King of Cats, spandex pants, Turkish coffee, Power Energy Sonia'. The hope being, of course, that one retrieves a measure of grace from the other. Like dancing in front of a Rothko.'
Matthew Caley
'Nicki Heinen’s poems deal with extremes of experience, but are composed with cool determination, loving patience and a Keatsian delight in the material and tangible world.’.
Sasha Dugdale
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Itch

Nicki’s Debut Pamphlet Itch was launched with Eyewear Press in 2017 and was a London Review Bookshop book of the year.

‘Nicki Heinen’s debut collection is half a lifetime in the making. The voice rings clear throughout every circumstance. Refusing to be dehumanised by medicalisation and attacks on agency, it is exact about its locations and attentive to transformations […] this collection ultimately chooses to sing a love that is simple and animal, and of astronomical proportions.’ – Vahni Capildeo

Itch

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Elle Dillon-Reams

Originally from Brighton, Elle has lived in London for the last 12 years. After dabbling in various poetry nights across the UK, she won the Genesis Slam in 2019 and is going ahead to the Hammer and Tongue National Finals at The Royal Albert Hall that was slated to take place last year. In 2019 she also performed as Boiler House London’s International Women’s Day Poet. After winning the Imperial College Nature Slam in 2020 with her piece FOR FREDDY, she was then the International Women’s Day poet for Imperial College London in their 2021 celebrations, running a bespoke workshop for doctors, mathematicians and scientists. 

Her debut play HoneyBEE, a spoken word solo show, received 5 star reviews, sold out at the Brighton fringe and VAULT Festival, and won both the Three Weeks Editor’s Award and Best Newcomer from The Scotsman in Edinburgh. She wrote and recorded an original piece of poetry for ‘Experimental Words’ collaborating with Scientist Sam Gallivan launching in June 2021,

and also recently recorded her second spoken word solo show MEAT, collaborating with musicians and sound designers Porscha Present and Emer Dineen. The audio recording will be released as part of Flugelman Productions’ 6-part podcast series of plays Make Me in Summer 2021.

Elle has had several pieces published by Dear Damsels, and was last year longlisted for the Pentabus Writer-in-Residence. She has been featured on Tyrone Lewis’ Spoken Word channel Process Productions and regularly records with MuddyFeet poetry. Her favourite poets producing the works most dog-eared and well loved on her bookshelf are Ocean Vuong, Polarbear, Cecilia Knapp, Caleb Femi, Kae Tempest, and Vanessa Kissule.

She facilitates poetry and performance, direct, and mentors at several establishments in London including charity and community theatre YATI (Young Actors Theatre Islington), East 15 Acting School, and for Mountview Drama school has been commissioned to write various new pieces of Spoken Word for Generation X, an outreach project designed to engage with groups of teenagers in the Peckham Community entitled My Generation.

Maladaptive is Elle’s first collection of Poetry.

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MALADAPTIVE

Maladaptive is about identity, wintering, womanhood, love and home. Exploring the loss of self and homesickness for that which is no longer there, grief for those gone and the rebuilding of hope and finding the light in the dark.

Whilst being a hugely honest, personal and vulnerable collection, Maladaptive is accessible, relatable and comforting. A raw exploration of mental health with a necessary, playful dose of finding comedy in unexpected places, a mindfulness in the natural world drawing on Elle’s growing up by the seaside and feeling a strong drawing to the water. And sourcing the bonds that connect us all as much more than monoliths, that which make us feel we belong.

'"Elle has a powerful grasp of language, deploying words with an often startling force - though there is gentleness here, too. There's a visceral connection to experience, with the everyday nestling up against the political and passionate. Breathtaking .'
Dan Simpson

SAMPLE POEM

ZWICKY 18

Flecks of burning
Irregular
Searching for companion galaxy
Interacting triggers black holes of
Worry
Constellations of conversations on the cusp of
She cuts off her hair, declares ballet is not for this girl
Explosion of potential leaves trail behind
Mum watches through a far away telescope
She is the astronaut of imagination
Daydreams on thumbsucks
Tumble tucks into pools outside of school playgrounds
Pounding feet of older children
Year 6 supernovas who don’t know her but show her COOL
Her territory lies in pages of stories, thrust into selecting her
Best Friend
Little cheeks erupt in apology
Flecks burning red
Her mouth clusters of dust.

'Elle is a witch, the best kind of witch, casting spells that reach deep into the souls of her readers and audiences, and pull out kindness and hope. Elle’s poetry is tender and timeless, speaking from a place of raw honesty that is so beautiful it often seems like magic .' 
Kayla Martel Feldman
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Elle Dillon-Reams takes to the Genesis Grand Final stage with a powerful poem that deals with the rise of sexual assault on the tube and why feminism is so essential in the battle against such abuse. Filmed December 2019.

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VERVE Poetry Press: 2021 to 2022!

At the end of a huge publishing year for VERVE and the beginning of yet another one, Verve Poetry Press Founder and Editor Stuart Bartholomew reflects on 2021 and what exciting things may be coming soon…

LOOKING BACK...

Well phew! What a year 2021 for VERVE Poetry Press. With no festival to distract us (don’t worry, we are back in Feb 22) it was a time to concentrate on our publishing side. While live events weren’t really an option most of the time, which harmed our ability to launch books properly, we did our best to run Zoom launches where possible (some incredible evenings were had on that most intimate of settings!) and even tried our hand at live streaming a multipoet event and chat!

In 2021, our publishing programme was part-funded by Arts Council England. This allowed us for the first time to employ help with our marketing – Kibriya Mehrban has done a stunning job blogging, producing wonderful monthly newsletters that read like magazines, and helping us to get our books out there when events haven’t been an option. She has made such a difference and will continue to do so this year too!

Check out our Newsletter Archive here!

With our funding, we were able to have our biggest year of publishing yet! We had our second open submissions window for full collections only in March (over 400 manuscripts submitted 🤯) and produced a wonderful season of collections and pamphlets of every stamp.

A highlight among many has to be Rushika Wick’s glorious debut Afterlife As Trash which was highly commended at the Forwards, reviewed in Poetry Review and was featured in Poem of the Week in The Telegraph. But we are incredibly proud of all the books we published in 2021.

LOOKING FORWARD...

Now in early 2022 and on the eve of our first three publications of the year, we have another massive season of publishing ahead of us, before reining things in a bit in 2023. So many exciting books including debuts by Nicki Heinen, Qudsia Akhtar, Kathy Pimlott and Kayleigh Campbell – spoken word from Kat Lyons, Imogen Stirling and Elle Dillon-Reams, an unexpected fourth collection from Sarah James and pamphlets from Erica Gillingham, Betty Doyle and Peter deGraft Johnsonwhich are all up for pre-order.

We will open submissions once again, this time in May, and will be accepting finished full collection and pamphlet length manuscripts, to search for that handful of books that will make our 2023 season sing… we can’t wait to see what we are sent!

We have our sister festival returning, featuring many of our Press poets and many, many others. After that, we are partnering with the BBC on this year’s Birmingham-based Contains Strong Language Festival in September which will be epic!

We hope that 2022 will see us able to get our poets out and about to readings and launch events much more than last year, and even have plans for a bi-monthly bi-city monthly night with open mic! Keep your ears to the ground for all our news!

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I feel that we are beginning to establish ourselves as a press to watch and a champion of variety and diversity as well as excellence in poetry. We are working hard to be an indie poetry press worthy of the name. We thank you for all your support!

Recent additions to our pantheon! Could you join them?

So there you have it! (Almost) everything you need to know about submitting to Verve Poetry Press in one place. If you or anyone you know is interested, be sure to follow us on socials for all the updates and get those manuscripts ready!

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Kat Lyons

‘I believe that telling stories is part of what makes us human. We tell stories to know ourselves, to share our experiences, and as a way of making and remaking our culture. Poetry exists in a continuum within that tradition alongside folksongs, punk cabaret, griots and bards, and everyone has the right to access it.’ 

Kat Lyons is a Queer Bristol-based writer, performer, workshop facilitator and creative producer whose work is grounded in everyday politics and a love of storytelling. They perform throughout the UK, were nominated for the 2022 Jerwood Poetry in Performance Award and their collaborative animated poetry film Duvet Days was selected as part of the official program at ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2021.

Kat is currently touring their debut solo show Dry Season, a spoken word theatre show exploring gender, age and menopause. Their debut poetry collection is forthcoming in Feb 2022 from Verve Poetry Press.

Kat is passionate about using the power of stories to re/connect people to themselves, each other and their environment.

More About Kat

LOVE BENEATH THE NAILS

Kat Lyons traces lines of grief, resilience and r/age with a storyteller’s sensibility and a lyrical touch. Exploring bereavement, familial relationships, ecological crisis, and Queer life and identity, Love Beneath the Nails scratches at layers of regret, reminiscence and self-delusion to reveal the beauty in the mundane.

By turns tender, visceral and fierce, these poems grip your hand and pull you into a world of acutely observed human frailties with surreal notes; where polar bears work the night shift, Grief eats toast on the sofa, and Shakespeare’s Beatrice defends her cannibalistic choices.

 'In writing that is cinematic and intimate Lyons balances deftly on the bridge between what is spoken and what finds life on the page. Experimental and innovative this debut collection adventures across a range of poetics including two heartbreaking sets of cantos circling grief and sexual terrorism. Beautiful.'
Joelle Taylor

SAMPLE POEM

When Eve Met Isaac

they talked about apples, and the mechanics of falling.  
examine the sheen on the ruddy skin, how it calls

your fingers, adjust your grip, they bruise easily.
their energy cannot be destroyed, but look 

what happens when they tumble
how they lie spread, smashed into the dirt.

deflect the force, slap the ground and roll.
she learnt that in her self-

defense class. ignore the hiss. how they suck  
their teeth at your body.

blame it on the hothouse weather.
walled gardens are always microclimates.

she packed her knowledge and left. he stayed
beneath the tree. the apples

cradled their maggots, swayed in the wind
waited for their chance.

'Kat is a brilliant and charismatic performer. Their control of movement and voice gives their work a physicality combined with a subtlety unusual in spoken word. Their writing is sharp, lyrical, well-observed and economical.'
Tom Sastry
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DRY SEASON

Lyons’ debut spoken word show, Dry Season, is not only an unflinching examination of menopausal chaos, but also a sharp look at societal expectations of age and gender. 

Dry Season interweaves music, movement and medical texts with original poetry and animation. Using the role of women in fairytales as a starting point, Kat takes the audience on a journey through a chaotic year of hormone issues, NHS visits and unexpected connections.

'Kat's unapologetic words deliver eloquent punches, their poetry challenging audiences to look them straight in the eyes and meet them for who they are. Kat's performance is compelling and magnetic.'
Anita Kelly

Created as a collaboration between Kat and Edalia Day, Duvet Days is a short animated poetry film and part of Kat’s ‘Dry Season’.

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Imogen Stirling

‘Writing the beautiful, flawed characters of Love The Sinner was a comfort during the isolated times of the pandemic. Following their entangled lives reminded me of the joys of community and cities, with the collection ultimately being a celebration of all it means to be human.’

Imogen Stirling is a Glasgow-based artist. She is a performance poet, theatre-maker, musician, writer and facilitator. She was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence for Paisley Book Festival 2021, is currently leading on Wigtown Book Festival’s youth programme and features as a writer/performer on BAFTA-winning Sky Arts documentary, Life & Rhymes, hosted by Benjamin Zephaniah. Imogen is a highly regarded artist who has performed her work widely throughout the UK and abroad (inc. BBC, Latitude Festival, Lindisfarne Festival, Neu! Reekie!, Sofar Sounds). Imogen is best recognised for her five-star debut collection and show #Hypocrisy which sold out at Edinburgh and Prague Fringe Festivals (Speculative Books, 2019) and was a participant of the BBC Words First talent development scheme (BBC Radio 1Xtra, BBC Asian Network and BBC Contains Strong Language). 

She was awarded ‘Artist of the Year 2021’ (Scottish Emerging Theatre Awards/National Theatre of Scotland), is part of the Convergence 2022 screenwriting cohort and is co-founder of Siren Theatre Company (Tron Theatre, Ayr Gaiety). Imogen’s work has been described as ‘life-affirming artistry’ (Everything Theatre) and ‘a tonic for the tribal times we live in’ (Darren McGarvey). 

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LOVE THE SINNER

This is a book adaptation of Imogen Stirling’s show-in-progress. A fusion of poetry, theatre and electronic music, Love The Sinner is a modern retelling of the stories of the seven deadly sins. Benjamin Zephaniah has called the show ‘the work of a lyrical genius’.

Swooping from the mundane to the immense, Stirling’s long-form poetry weaves narratives of human experience.

This story sees ancient roots clasp hands with modern compassion to explore human frailty, love and resilience, while the threat of ecological crisis rumbles in the background. 

'A rich and other worldly book, a compelling work woven with gold threads of resistance and resilience, connection and human nature.'
Salena Godden

SAMPLE POEM

Beginnings

Cast from the mind of a Greek,
they are seven.  
Etched in memory and manuscript, 
they act as guide,
warning
and legend. 
Crude definitions
caught somewhere between complex and simple, 
their cardinal intelligence documents
a testament of misdemeanour. 
Impressive, really  
See their history and stature,
standing as pinnacles, their vision held
t  e  r  r  i  f  i  c   v  a  s  t  n  e  s  s  
They span millennia
to tell us of sin.

'This collection demonstrates just how creative a thoughtful and intelligent poet can get with sin. I think this is the work of a lyrical genius. It is crafted by a great poet, and crafted with emotional depth. There's nothing like this. There's no one like Imogen.' 
Benjamin Zephaniah
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#HYPOCRISY

This is a book adaptation of Imogen Stirling’s five-star show, with illustrations by Sean Mulvenna.
 
#Hypocrisy was originally performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018, before transferring to London’s Theatre503 and touring around the UK and Europe. An audio version of the show (featuring an original score) can be found on Spotify and Bandcamp.
'Exactly the sort of poetry we need right now.'
Alan Bissett

Rehearsal footage taken prior to Love The Sinner’s showcase at the Tron Theatre’s Outside Eyes event (October 2019).

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