Posted on

Asma Elbadawi

“Many of my teachers predicted I would fail in life. This book is proof to me that I didn’t fail and a reminder that
we are all created in our unique ways, with our own paths and
interests and identities.”

Did you know? Before she got into basketball, Asma was a regular jujitsu-er, something she's picked up again since becoming a pro! Catch her on TikTok doing workouts in her garden!

Asma Elbadawi is a British Sudanese (born in Sudan and raised in England) Sports Inclusivity Consultant, Basketball Player and Spoken Word Poet. Elbadawi holds a BA Hons in Photography, Video and Digital Imaging and a Masters in Visual Arts. Her dual cultural heritage deeply influences her creativity with her main focus being female empowerment. She is best known for her involvement in the globally successful FIBA ALLOW HIJAB Campaign. This campaign saw the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) allow Muslim women to wear the Hijab in Professional Basketball and as the 2015 Words First Leeds winner which is a National poetry competition partnered by BBC Radio 1Xtra and the Roundhouse.

BELONGINGS

Belongings is, as it sounds, a collection of thoughts and feelings that depict the very heart of Asma Elbadawi’s life as a British Sudanese woman. A life that contains multiple influences, expectations and juxtapositions. Her poems are raw and unfiltered – Asma holds little back in her work, covering subjects personal to her such as migration, mental health, racism and sport.

These lines that started out as spoken pieces have finally made it to the page, to be read and savoured. Asma presents you with that which is hers. Her Belongings.

SAMPLE POEM

Words

Someone once told me
You should fear writers
They will dissect your wounds
And present you with them as words
Sentences
Sharp enough to pierce right through you
Let you question
At what point did you drop your armour long enough for them?
To read all your fears
Watch you grapple with your mind
Wonder if you’re strong enough to lay with your nightmares
And come out of the other end gasping for air
Use whatever remaining breaths you have left to drag your limbs to safe haven
Bathe in your dreams
And make them a reality
Or if you will choke

The same person once told me
That you should never trust a poet
They have the ability
To spin silk-smooth words that will leave you enchanted
Believing everything they tell you
Holding on to every thread
Drop your armour
Pied pipers, you will find yourself dancing to their sweet tunes
Follow them into whatever danger zone they planted
Fall deeply
For them to leave you hanging

No one stopped to ask how do writers and poets translate raw emotions so eloquently?
What whirl-wind of a storm must their life be in to feel so deeply?

Luckily someone once told me that there is power in your words
People will always fear people like you
Never lose your voice
Use it even if it’s shaking.

'Whether on film or in the flesh, Asma Elbadawi has an undeniable, almost electrical presence – it’s no wonder that she’s shot to fame over the past year as an outstanding performance poet.'

Verbal Remedy

Sean Wai Keung

“I think the concept of taking something familiar and making it seem a little less familiar is one of the things that attracts me to art. By playing with form, I hope to make something a little different, which reflects my experience of hybridity in daily life.”

Did you know? Sean's untitled piece won the Funniest Poem Award during Café Writers 2015 Poetry Competition - you can find it at cafewriters.co.uk!

Sean Wai Keung is a Glasgow-based poet and performer. His pamphlet you are mistaken won the Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2016 and he has also released how to cook and be happy, both with Speculative Books. He has developed solo performances with the National Theatre of Scotland, where he was a Starter Artist in 2017, Anatomy Arts, Magnetic North and the Fringe of Colour, and is also a poetry editor at EX/POST magazine. He holds degrees from Roehampton University, London, and the University of East Anglia, Norwich and has been published in 404Ink, Blood Bath, datableedzine and The Suburban Review, amongst others.

SIKFAN GLASCHU

sikfan glaschu is an exploration of identity and authenticity, told through the lens of the city of Glasgow and its restaurants, cafes, languages, histories and lockdowns. By using the city as a starting point, Sean Wai Keung examines his own relationship to food, migration and family, as well as the very notion of ‘belonging’ somewhere in the first place.

Written with honesty and humour, sikfan glaschu is Wai Keung’s exciting debut full-length collection.

SAMPLE POEM

chinatown

this place was built by migrants
therefore it is ours

they came from the gàidhealtachd
they came from the ghalltachd

sometimes i wonder what my 公公 would have thought
had he been given the chance to visit

he had lived in other cities built by migrants
hongkong – liverpool – bradford –

i like to think that if he had been given the chance
he would have liked it
but who can know for sure

when he first arrived in the uk i dont know
what glaschu would have been like

chinatown here opened in 1992
the year after i was born

i moved here three
years after he died

this place was built by migrants
and we have been eating here ever since

'Through his inventive use of form and language, Sean Wai Keung’s latest collection explores the new possibilities to understand and chronicle a British-born Chinese person’s multiple sense of belonging and cultural identity, and the unforgettable experience of the local during the lockdown.

Written with honesty and humour, this collection—filled with surprising food memories and adventures—makes one question the meaning of culture, legitimacy and authenticity.

Jennifer Wong

ESEA Joy / Resistance Database Project

In preparation for a performance he’s developing – FORTUNE – Sean’s putting together a database of thoughts actions and activities that express an element of Joy and/or Resitance from East- & South-East-Asian people and communities.

Whether it’s an event you felt free to express yourself or the sharing of a particular meal that brought you joy, Sean’s looking to collect these moments and share them in a public database as well as using some of them in his show.

SEAN'S PAMPHLETS

Hannah Hodgson

“This pamphlet explores more about the seriousness of my illness, but also the unexpected light.”

Hannah Hodgson is a poet living with life-limiting illness. Her work has been published by the Poetry Society, Teen Vogue and Poetry Saltzburg, amongst others. She is the recipient of a 2020 Northern Writers Award for Poetry. Her first poetry pamphlet Dear Body was published by Wayleave Press in 2018.

WHERE I'D WATCH PLASTIC TREES NOT GROW

Hannah has taken her regular hospitalization due to serious illness and made it into astonishing poetry. Her world of the hospital is sometimes like a zoo, sometimes like a gallery and sometimes a crowded town square. The wards contain tigers and crows, butterflies – doctors become poets, the dead turn into an art installation, while outside, the trees are plastic – as unchanging as Hannah’s shielding days that ‘drag like a foot.’

But between the pulled curtains of these words the details of real-life amongst the terminally ill are depicted in full colour. A daughter ‘cries neatly in a corner’ while her mourning father spins ‘his wedding band around his finger.’ Nurses fill ‘carrier bags marked ‘patient’s property’,’ while ‘the industrial plastic’ crinkles as a body is lifted from bed to trolley in its bag.

Did you know? The title of this pamphlet comes from a plastic tree in the outpatients' department next to Manchester Children’s Hospital!

The poet’s eye feels unblinking at times – unable but also unwilling to blink. How could it when it has so much to show? These poems are heavy with import, but they are light with the liveliness of art that is beautifully rendered.

SAMPLE POEM

Little Deaths

After the death of my stomach,
the church was full of mourners –

but at the 15th funeral of myself
it’s just me and a few doctors.

We lay wreathes by each ear
and seal each urn with a hearing aid mould.

I’m a widower grieving herself.
My stem still living,

while all the petals have died;
my body has begun to droop.

‘These are extraordinary poems that contain both humour and grief towards a world that continually dehumanizes disabled people in multiple ways. With startling images, Hannah Hodgson balances anger and love, despair and hope – this is a pamphlet that will leave any reader irrevocably changed.'

Kim Moore

BREAKTHROUGH: OUR TIME

Commissioned by The Lakes International Comic Art Festival, this is an anthology of some of the newest and most exciting talents emerging in British Comics. Hannah worked closely with artist Michael Lightfoot to create a piece exploring disability in Britain today, published alongside other work exploring climate change activism, mental health issues in a multicultural society and romance in a post-Brexit world.

DEAR BODY (2018)

Hannah’s first pamphlet, Dear Body was published by Wayleave Press in 2018. An account fo her experiences suffering from an array of conditions that dramatically affect her life, this pamphlet raises questions about the relationship between person identity, the physical body and our place in the world.

'a short but genuinely powerful and carefully made work of literature. It shifted my understanding of disability and chronic illness.'

Jonathan Davidson

Under the Radar

Jamie Hale

“It was important to me that I create something that highlighted, demonstrated the value that disabled people have, that we’re not just vulnerable, or disposable, that we’re a part of the world – and everyone’s interconnected.”

Did You Know Jamie won second-place in the Yale-UCL Poetry Competition for their poem 'Fibrotic' which you can read in full on the ucl website!

Jamie Hale is an artist, curator, poet, writer, playwright, actor, and director. They create poetry, comedy, scriptwriting, and drama for page, stage, and screen.

They have performed their work at the Barbican, Invisible Fest, Tate Modern, the Southbank Centre and with Graeae, and have written for publications including the Guardian and Magma. Their pandemic poetry pamphlet, Shield, is published in Jan 2021.

They are also an expert in disability and health and social care policy: They are CEO of Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance, chair Lewisham Disabled People’s Commission, and are studying for a Master’s in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Health at UCL.

SHIELD

As the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, Jamie was told by their GP that, due to their underlying health condition, they would not be a priority for critical care treatment.

Using the compressed form of a sonnet, Jamie wrote and re-wrote the experience of facing their own mortality, sometimes in their own voice, sometimes from the perspectives of others – a nurse working during the pandemic or the first carriers of the Spanish Flu – capturing the crisis from all angles.

This work became a pamphlet, Shield, 21 sonnets following Jamie through the grief of facing death while newly married, and into a place of resilience, resistance, and a commitment to creation against mortality.

SAMPLE POEM

xii

my ventilator is set to 14 and 5
these are normal he says i type it frantic
he’s still a child in my head my brother says
don’t let your oxygen levels drop

below 80 don’t increase your
ventilator settings too much you’d risk
gastric insufflation remember
tidal volume is estimated based on

what’s left in the lung as it closes
remember love is based on tides
as they come in closer remember
to bring your own ventilator

remember if they’re overwhelmed
they’ll save anyone before you

‘These are arresting, heart-stopping poems lit with a rare intensity. Hale’s poems don’t pull any punches, they explore what it is to live in a body and on the way touch the centre of the fragility deep inside all of us. Humane poems that will make you ache.’

Mona Arshi

NOT DYING

NOT DYING is Jamie’s self-written and solo-performed show, combining poetry, comedy, narrative storytelling and drama. It explores their experiences moving between the categories of ‘dying’ and ‘not dying’ and what it means to make art amidst this experience of flux.

It was developed through Barbican OpenLab, before being performed at the Lyric Hammersmith in June 2019 and the Barbican Centre as part of CRIPtic, a showcase of d/Deaf and disabled artists curated by Jamie in October 2019.

‘an acerbically funny and deeply thought-provoking monologue [...] Hale is a compelling and witty performer who makes you laugh and reflect in equal measure.'

Agnes Carrington-Windo

Plays to See

Twenty-one books in 2021? All the lastest news from Verve Poetry Press…

WHAT A YEAR…

2020 was a strange year for everyone, and as a press that thrives on live events, we were definitely faced with some challenges. Still, with seven collections, seven pamphlets and two anthologies published, a four-in-one zoom launch event under our belt and a submissions window that’s leading us into a bumper year of scheduled releases… it hasn’t been all terrible.

This year more than ever, people have been turning to poetry for comfort and connection. As always, we’re honoured by everyone who chooses to read from our library of work (which we’re trying our best to keep accessible during lockdown—read below!) and we’re looking forward to continuing to publish the vibrant and vital poetry we all need heading into 2021.

SUBMISSIONS

We were absolutely blown away by the results of our first-ever open submissions window in 2020, during which we were sent just over five hundred manuscripts from far and wide. After a long deliberation process (read: many, many cups of tea) we managed the extremely difficult task of choosing the collections and pamphlets which make up our 2021 publishing schedule. Scroll down to read about the first of these publications, out today(!) and to find out how you can submit your work to VPP this year.

JAMIE HALE – SHIELD

“…remember

tidal volume is estimated based on

what’s left in the lung as it closes

remember love is based on tides

as they come in closer remember

to bring your own ventilator

remember if they’re overwhelmed

they’ll save anyone before you.”

Our first release of 2021 is Jamie Hale’s Shield, a pamphlet of sonnets written at height of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Jamie was told that, because of their underlying condition, they wouldn’t be a priority for critical care treatment.

This work became Jamie’s first poetry publication, which follows them through the grief of facing death while newly married, and into a place of resilience, resistance, and a commitment to creation against mortality. Order Shield now

Jamie Hale is a poet and essayist based in South-East London. Their solo show, NOT DYING, has been performed at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith and at the Barbican Centre, while they have had poetry published in Magma, Rialto, and Poetry Quarterly. They have performed poetry at venues including Rich Mix, the Science Gallery, the South Bank Centre, the Saboteur Awards, and the Tate Modern.

They write for the Wellcome Trust on disability arts, and are a researcher and contributor for a Netflix show. In 2018 they won one of the London Writers’ Awards for Poetry, and in 2019 they were shortlisted for the Jerwood Fellowships.

Find out more about Jamie here.

HEAR JAMIE READ

Jamie is launching Shield with an online Zoom event on January 23rd, where you can hear them read from the pamphlet as well as talking about the role of the outsider in poetry alongside CN Lester. Registration is free but you can pay £10, £15 or £20 to also get a signed copy of the book, with all profits going to charities focusing on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on BAME people / POC and disabled people.

You can also catch a screening of Jamie’s show ‘NOT DYING’ at Kendal Poetry Festival on 22nd February, which will be followed by a live Q&A.

ACE FUNDING

2021 marks the first year of Verve Poetry Press being supported by Arts Council England, which means more hands on deck, more running around behind the scenes and, most importantly, more brilliant books. We’re absolutely thrilled to get this funding and keen as keen to see where it can take us going forward. Speaking of…

IN STORE FOR 2021

Thanks to our submissions window in 2020, we’ve got a HUGE line-up of publications coming up, with no fewer than twenty-one (twenty-one!) books set to hit shelves before the end of this year. Collections from Asma Elbadawi, Rushika Wick, Sean Wai Keung & Elaine Beckett as well as pamphlets from Hannah Hodgson and Natalie Whittaker are already available for pre-order on the VPP website, with plenty more on their way!

Going into our third full year as a press, we’re incredibly proud to have such a brilliant and diverse roster of styles, genres and poets in our ranks. From the most dynamic accompaniments to performance poetry, to capital P Page collections, and all the wonderful words in between.

Head over to our website to read the full(ish) line-up!

FREE P&P IN LOCKDOWN

Because we know you’re not able to go out to bookshops right now, we’re offering free postage and packaging on all our 2020 and 2021 titles for the duration of this lockdown. We hope it makes it easier for our readers to get their hands on books they love and for our poets to get the readership (and royalties) they deserve. If you need an instant fix, don’t forget that a whole bunch of our publications are also available as ebooks!

OUR POETS, ELSEWHERE

We’re super proud to see VPP poet Rushika Wick featured in the Winter 2020 issue of Poetry Review, with her poem ‘Hair’, which you can read on the Poetry Society’s website. She’s one of four featured poets reading alongside editor Emily Berry at their online launch event on 28th January. Tickets are FREE but limited and available here.

Rushika’s debut collection Afterlife as Trash is coming out with us on April 21st and is available for preorder right now on our website.

MORE SUBMISSIONS!

Interested in joining the ranks of Verve Poetry Press poets? In March 2021 we’ll be opening our inboxes once again, this time for full collections only—which we’re defining as 60+ pages. As always, we’re eager to read and publish all sorts of poetry, and if you think we might be right for you, head over to our website to read more about what we’re looking for.

…and that’s your lot!

(for now)

Check back regularly for all the latest Verve news, updates and exclusive sneak peeks at upcoming books as well as loads of other bits and bobs or sign up to our mailing list to have it all delivered, direct to your inbox every month. Until then, take care and poet safely!

-Verve Poetry Press

Posted on

Elise Hadgraft / corporationpop

I’m essentially the ghost of the Manchester poetry scene … loads of people have a story about seeing me, very few of them are true. #HYSTPoet

E.Hadgraft and corporationpop are two very different poets living inside elusive Mancunian wordsmith Elise Hadgraft. Where E.Hadgraft’s poems are quiet, poised, beautifully realised musings on love and loss, corporationpop’s music based poetics are down at heel, messy, kitchen sink musings. Needless to say, we at Verve love them both, but we felt that one person’s two quite different poetic approaches deserved their own spaces – their own front covers – their own titles. Thus comes into being Elise Hadgraft’s dual collection-in-one – Now There Are No More Love Songs/ Mount Olympus Is Empty

Elise describes it as ‘a double sided poetry collection of old and new pieces with original artwork. It’s full of swearing and pain and would probably be an excellent Christmas gift for somebody you don’t like very much.’ We agree about the swearing and pain, but think it would work as an incredible gift for someone you like loads!

Side One (to use music terminology), Now There No More Love Songs is described as ‘an analogue catalogue by corporationpop’. Here’s what you need to know about it…

In 2017, corporationpop emerged as a result of Northern beat poet Elise Hadgraft’s late night drinking sessions in a suburban kitchen. Although she no longer drinks, she continues to produce and release music under the moniker of corporationpop. A look back at ten years of procrastination, ‘Now There Are No More Love Songs’ is the closest Elise Hadgraft ever wants to get to a best of. It includes some notable performance pieces from an often volatile and divisive career, as well as a hodgepodge of corporationpop lyrics and a few long forgotten relics.

These are words for the down-trodden and pissed off – those who fight back one minute and sulk off and hide the next. For words that were meant to be accompanied by a tinny electropop backing-track that sounds like a synth played on an ironing board, these poems read incredibly well. The angry fragility contained within them is there for all to see.

You can download corporationpop back catalogue in all its suburban click-track glory if you follow the link:

https://corporationpopband.bandcamp.com

SAMPLE POEM

You Write Songs (From Now There Are No More Love Songs)

You write songs like I recite shopping lists
Staving off forgetfulness
With bread
And milk
And washing-up liquid
It’s your turn to do the dishes
Stretched as we are between
Sex, asthma and domesticity
Sex City citizens
So far from sexy
We’re constantly walking
Since public transport is a luxury we can’t afford this week
And wine
And cheese
Four pounds seventy on the meter to see me through until Tuesday
Even heat
Even heat’s a pipe dream.

You write songs like I boil kettles
Fill baths by the pint and buy
Only the essentials
And apples
And toilet roll
And soapbox Britpop singles
You write songs like I put clingfilm on windows
Well-honed dexterity
Three degrees above freezing
You write songs like sweets.
You write songs like sweets old ladies fed me
On suburban streets
In nineteen ninety-five.
You write songs like songwriters lie
You write songs like songwriters lie
You write songs like songwriters lie

[Perhaps the question is less have you seen this poet, but which poet exactly are we looking at?]

Side Two: Mount Olympus Is Empty, under the moniker of E.Hadgraft, is another beast altogether.

Over to Elise again: ‘Started in the basement of a cult complex on the outskirts of Berlin and finished over a year later in a suburban terrace, Mount Olympus Is Empty is a brand new body of unperformed work by Elise Hadgraft. Influenced by half-remembered Greek mythology from her childhood, these pieces present a deeply personal insight into a mind struggling to rebuild itself after catastrophic collapse.’

The pain is still there in these poems, the swearing in semi-abeyance. But this feels like a much quieter probing of these noisy subjects – the imagery is so strong and replaces the sass with lines that stick without offending. Levels are delved, depths plummetted to, in words that possess a grissly beauty, rich enough to stand on and be lifted back up by. These poems can be read again and again, and each time more meaning is discovered, more feelings unearthed. These are not verses for a rowdy bar-room – they are for a library with the classics to hand, an empty lock-down semi with the mantle clock’s ticking the only noise.

A – R – T

There are strong visual elements to these books too – Elise is an artist as well as a poet (don’t let her tell you otherwise!). Both covers are her own work, and she wanted images to feature heavily within the book too. With that in mind, she invited ace finazine artist godisanewt to provide a fanzine to finish Now There Are No More Love Songs off nicely.

Elise has also provided her own excellent artwork for the inside pages of Mount Olympus Is Empty. This is a multi-facetted work on every level.

SAMPLE POEM

Lunesta (from Mount Olympus Is Empty)

Hypnos brings me
Bad dreams,
A sleepless symphony
Of discomforts, he
Rolls us over in
Sweat-drenched sheets.
Our borrowed bed
Creaks.
With each movement,
I will you would
Stay still…
But we, a dishabille of
Ill-fitting limbs,
Lie restless.

Come morning,
I will forget this.

Posted on

About the Team

Publisher/ Editor – Stuart Bartholomew

Stuart Bartholomew is Director and Programmer of VERVE: a Birmingham Festival of poetry and spoken word, which returns for its fifth year in February 2022. He is also Publisher at and Co-Founder of Verve Poetry Press – an independent press that focusses on publishing poets from Birmingham and beyond who share the festival’s ethos. His programming and publishing vision is to celebrate the full breadth of quality poetic activity in Birmingham and the UK – whatever the style or source – in colourful and exciting ways.

Marketing Manager – Kibriya Mehrban

Kibriya Mehrban is a poet living and working in Birmingham. They graduated from the University of Birmingham in 2018 and have spent most of their time since working for various literature festivals and organisations, and also performing themselves. In 2019 they were were accepted onto the Hippodrome Young Poets and was part of their collaborative anthology ’30 Synonyms for Emerging’ (Verve Poetry Press, 2019). They’re currently enjoying being part of the team behind the Overhear app.

Our Advisory Board – Cynthia Miller, Amerah Saleh, Roy McFarlane, Helen Calcutt

Our board members meet with us at least twice a year to help us evaluate our strategy going forwards, and review our current performance against the aims and promises we have been making.

They were selected due to their strong connections to our city and the festival, to their embodyment of the values which we stand for, and most importantly, for their honesty and likely contradictory view-points.

Cynthia Miller is a Malaysian-American innovation consultant, poet and festival producer living in Edinburgh. She is one of the co-Founders of the Verve Poetry Festival and a former Trustee of the Forward Arts Foundation. Her poems have appeared in Ambit, Rialto, Butchers Dog, and harana poetry, among others, and a pamphlet length collection of her work appeared in

Primers Volume 2 (Nine Arches Press, 2018) edited by Jane Commane and Jacob Sam La Rose. She is currently working on her first full collection.

Amerah Saleh is an internationally acclaimed Muslim Yemeni poet born and raised in Birmingham, releasing her book I Am Not From Here (Verve Poetry Press, 2018) and closing the Commonwealth Games Ceremony from Goal Coast to Birmingham live to 1.4 billion people. Winner of Overall Youth Excellence Award 2015 and named Brum 30 Under 30 in 2018. She is the Co-Founder of Verve

Poetry Press, Board Member of Birmingham’s only producing theatre: Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the UK’s Spoken Word organisation Apples & Snakes. Her passions include engaging young people in change that affects them, Italian food, writing poetry and shaking up organisations.

Roy McFarlane is a poet and former community worker. He has held the role of the Birmingham Poet Laureate, been the Starbucks Poet in Residence and is currently the Birmingham & Midlands Institute Poet in Residence.

His debut collection was Beginning With Your Last Breath (Nine Arches Press 2016). Roy’s second collection The Healing Next Time

(Nine Arches Press 2018) was nominated for the Ted Hughes award, longlisted for the Jhalak Prize, a Poetry Book Society recommendation and selected by the Guardian as one of the best poetry titles of 2018.

Helen Calcutt’s poetry and critical writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Huffington Post, the Brooklyn Review, Unbound, Poetry Scotland, Wild Court, Envoi, The London Magazine and others. Her debut pamphlet, Sudden Rainfall (Perdika, 2014) was a PBS Choice. Her debut collection, Unable Mother, was published by V.Press in 2018. She is the editor and creator of Anthology

Eighty-Four (Verve Poetry Press, 2019) which was a Sabotage Best Anthology short-listed title, and a Poetry Wales Book of the Year, and raised money for CALM’s prevent male suicide campaign. Her latest work is the pamphlet Somehow (Verve Poetry Press, 2020) and her second full collection is currently in preparation.

Posted on

Verve Poetry Press 2021 Releases

Verve is beyond proud to announce that we will be publishing 21 new pamphlets and collections in 2021 from accomplished and new voices. No matter your taste in poetry, you are bound to find a new favourite.

See our list of releases below:

Continue reading Verve Poetry Press 2021 Releases

Posted on

Leah Atherton

Leah Atherton is a linguist, poet and runner based in Birmingham, UK. She had poems about her adventures featured by iRunFar and Porridge magazines and Brum Radio Poets. Elsewhere, her work has appeared in Birmingham Art Gallery and on BBC Radio WM, and was included as part of the Beatfreeks Collective anniversary anthology, Wild Dreams and Louder Voices (2018, Verve Poetry Press)

She believes in strong coffee, campfire whisky and the power of muddy shoes.

A sky the colour of hope is the debut full collections from this incredible cross-country poet who writes as she runs – wonderfully.

Part memory box, part prayer, a sky the colour of hope charts the journey of a young woman navigating loss in its many faces, as she learns to choose her own road. Heavily inspired by her 2018 solo fastpack of the South West Coast Path in memory of her father, this collection is by turns light and aching, bitter and joyful as she moves through landscapes forever changed by the people she met along the way. A truly wonderful collection.

You can read Leah’s poem there is only one constant which was featured in the wonderful Porridge Magazine, HERE

SAMPLE POEM:

SUNDAY

Let’s dance, you and me.

Leave the straight lines and the rules in the parking lot

and dare the wind to play catch up.

We’ll barrel our way down root-choked paths

and take corners too tight for our talent;

slog up climbs like we’re chasing redemption on every hilltop

And swear we find hope along every single-track we follow

where unanswered prayers make voltage pylons of our bones

and our legs start to buzz with the pent up wire and static.

Let’s fly into the wind until the rain makes our faces numb

and we will laugh and let the ice melt baptise the wrong out of our pasts

write our penance in mud track and shale

We’ll scrape ourselves raw and scoop ourselves out;

turn valleys into confessionals, thermos tea into communion wine

and make jack-o-lanterns of our haunted hearts to light our return.

You and I know that a house of healing

doesn’t need four walls or a roof when you have your feet in the cloud,

this thorn-scrape-peat-stain-hunt-grin cathedral of shadows and light

Come on let’s stand, you and me, on the shoulders of giants,

leave behind pieces of questions beat out on hillsides

so far apart only God can read them without skipping a line

Recited out by stubborn feet and tempest wills

we’ll follow the music over moor and fell, read answers in contours;

code-lines so far apart maybe God was the one who left them there

Let’s dance to the rhythm and drum and the reckless reels

of a landscape that sings to us in a language unwritten

until maybe, at last, we can follow the wild song back.

Let’s run.

Posted on

Jemima Hughes

Jemima Hughes is a multi-slam winning performance poet who hurried on to the Birmingham poetry scene in March 2018, and swiftly hurried off again after showcasing five minutes of her ongoing mental health battle.

Previously an international trampo-linist and coach, Jemima strove to always support her participants emotionally as much as competitively. As reality hit that she was in need of support herself, she stepped away from her sport and lifelong passion to focus on her mental health. During her most conflicted days, she turned to writing poetry to express herself at a time when her verbal commun-ication was minimal, consequently finding a new passion. These days, Jemima has found her voice again,

mastered timing and rhythm, and has travelled across the UK and Ireland to headline multiple spoken word events. She now hopes that reading this book will help others in some of the ways that writing it has helped her.

Due out in July 2020, Unorthodox is Jemima’s lond awatied debut collection. As a perfomer she has been compared to a tornado – her words lifting you, spinning you around, her rhymes connecting with each other across space and heightened emotion. The lively poems in this work move you in similar ways, as Jemima leads you into a whirlwind of love and heartache, where struggle and abuse and paralyzing mental health issues are foreces to be reckoned with, subside momentarily, only to rise again. We are thrilled to have been able to pin these words down long enough to be consumed.

Unorthodox truly is a remarkable and powerful book of poems.

ABOUT JEMIMA:

“Jemima is a tour de force when it comes to spoken word poetry. She pulls no punches and is brutal yet beautiful in equal measure. Now she’s brought her work to the page. Treat yourselves. Read this collection and catch her live if you can.” – Giovanni “Spoz” Esposito.

“Storm Jemima is a surge of intensity gathering on your horizon. It is a tumbling of sentiments and sincerity of message, getting harder to ignore, always ready to drop. Nothing looks quite the same after it hits.” – Jasmine Gardosi.

“One of the most extraordinarily talented performers I have had the pleasure of seeing.” – Clive Oseman.

SAMPLE POEM:

DUST
You were created in this universe and you want to fit in?
Brewed in the heart of an explosion. Stardust.

A potential five hundred million planets
capable of supporting life, and we can’t all support each other on one.
A single quality (and I do mean quality) receives hate,
when 99.9% of species are already gone.

You are a black body.
A star,
absorbing all radiant energy,
emitting much more by far.

They believe they are the Sun,
which is to say, you are bigger and brighter.
The human eye factors in surrounding colours, so the appearance is whiter,
but the Sun is a green star.

A jealous ball of raging fire.

Your light breaks through turbulent atmosphere
illuminating the way for others,
the twinkle in your eye reveals every deflection,
causing a change of intensity in your colours.

They move like the billions of lifeforms on their skin
feast on champagne and caviar,
swim in oceans accommodating two hundred thousand different viruses,
but won’t gaze upon the beauty that you are.

Scared.
Scared they’re going to catch on,
catch themselves viewing rainbows in black and white.
Supernovas brought elements essential for survival,
and you are essential for this world to get survival right.

If someone looks at you like they want to fix you,
they will fall through the cracks,
not all star systems are binary,
and the cosmos exists naturally, it does not have to apologise for the way it acts.

Are you a galaxy?
With a black hole at the centre of you?
Black holes are very, very cold,
but galaxies will not be consumed.

Gravitational attraction pulls in matter,
this force works to ground you,
try to keep a stable orbit
until this force of nature is through.

One hundred and forty billion (or so) galaxies,
you’re not alone in this gloom.
And you’re about to be on fire
because when a flame is at its hottest, it appears blue.

13.8 billion years old
and getting more interesting by the day,
your age adds to your wonder,
it doesn’t take your worth away.

A teaspoon of neutron star weighs
about ten million tonnes,
and your weight, or size,
doesn’t dictate your levels of attraction.

More than twenty-four time zones means
you and your anxiety made it on time,
when you look into the starry sky you’re looking deep into the past,
so your punctuality after sunset is sublime.

Outer space is open to interpretation
and your silence is of tremendous value,
needing spectacles doesn’t make you a spectacle
when 95% of the universe is still out of view.

Survival on Earth is unnecessarily difficult,
and lives are so good at ruining lives,
but if we judge those who judge us we resolve nothing,
accepting our self is how we survive.

You see, you stand out against the back drop of this universe,
and almost all ordinary matter is empty space,
if someone struck a match on the moon, astronomers could spot the flame,
the right people will see you and your qualities will be embraced.

Finding flaws in someone else doesn’t make our own less visible,
throwing shade won’t change the shade of someone’s skin,
if you touch two pieces of the same type of metal together
in the vacuum of space, they will fuse.

And rainbows have always created a happiness within.

The static of a retro television
displays the Big Bang afterglow,
we won’t always have the correct channel of thought,
but the reason is bigger than we know.

The Sun rages, but it can still bring warmth and light,
and space has enough space for us all to progress.
At the bare bones of it we are all the same,
and if we are all simply dust, shouldn’t we clean up our mess?

From We’ve Done Nothing Wrong. We’ve Nothing to Hide: The Verve Anthology of Diversity Poems. Selected and Introduced by Andrew McMillan

“Many of my teachers predicted I would fail in life. This book is proof to me that I didn’t fail and a reminder thatwe are all created in our unique ways, with our own paths andinterests and identities.”

BELONGINGS

More from Asma!

More Verve Poetry Press Authors

“I think the concept of taking something familiar and making it seem a little less familiar is one of the things that attracts me to art. By playing with form, I hope to make something a little different, which reflects my experience of hybridity in daily life.”

SIKFAN GLASCHU

ESEA Joy / Resistance Database Project

SEAN'S PAMPHLETS

More from Sean!

More Verve Poetry Press Authors

“This pamphlet explores more about the seriousness of my illness, but also the unexpected light.”

WHERE I'D WATCH PLASTIC TREES NOT GROW

BREAKTHROUGH: OUR TIME

DEAR BODY (2018)

More from Hannah!

More Verve Poetry Press Authors

“It was important to me that I create something that highlighted, demonstrated the value that disabled people have, that we’re not just vulnerable, or disposable, that we’re a part of the world – and everyone’s interconnected.”

SHIELD

NOT DYING

More from Jamie!

More Verve Poetry Press Authors

WHAT A YEAR…

SUBMISSIONS

HEAR JAMIE READ

ACE FUNDING

IN STORE FOR 2021

FREE P&P IN LOCKDOWN

OUR POETS, ELSEWHERE

MORE SUBMISSIONS!

…and that’s your lot!

I’m essentially the ghost of the Manchester poetry scene … loads of people have a story about seeing me, very few of them are true. #HYSTPoet

A – R – T

Publisher/ Editor – Stuart Bartholomew

Marketing Manager – Kibriya Mehrban

Our Advisory Board – Cynthia Miller, Amerah Saleh, Roy McFarlane, Helen Calcutt

“Many of my teachers predicted I would fail in life. This book is proof to me that I didn’t fail and a reminder that
we are all created in our unique ways, with our own paths and
interests and identities.”