New and Recent Poetry from the North: Autumn 2024
Lean into the cosy autumn vibes by spending a gloomy evening with a new poetry book. We’ve got you covered with a bumper selection from Northern poets – but you’ll need to provide your own blankets and hot drinks…
Amongst the many extraordinary collections and pamphlets published this Autumn, I especially recommend The Naming of Names (Smith|Doorstop), the debut full-length collection by acclaimed poet and translator Shash Trevett. Shash previously won a Northern Writers’ Award for her poetry and her work has been widely published in anthologies and journals. The collection is focused on the devasting loss of life suffered by Tamil civilians during the Sri Lankan Civil War, poignantly reflecting on how we remember people after a time of traumatic history.
Marginal Future is the new collection by the North East poet SJ Litherland (Smokestack). These varied and eclectic poems weave memory and the seasons, fears for the future and times of uncertainty and anguish. As Cynthia Fuller writers, ‘the energy of these poems asserts that poetry matters’.
Also from Smokestack is Marilyn Longstaff’s new collection Being Gemini. In these poems, she explores how everything has two sides and how contrasting ways of being are experienced and understood. The striking cover image is by the Canadian artist Fiona Crangle.
sometimes real love comes quick & easy is the debut pamphlet by Janine Bradbury and is published by the excellent Ignition Press. These are exquisite, lyrical and vibrant poems from a poet with an exciting future.
A Raven on a Writing Desk (Dunlin Press) is the new pamphlet by Julie Hogg, who is based on the North Yorkshire coast. Poems such as ‘Sealight, a Study at Millbank’ are quietly dramatic and atmospheric, with a strongly visual sense.
Green (Bad Betty Press) is the new pamphlet by the excellent poet Suzannah Evans.
River Talk by Kerry Darbishire (Hedgehog Press) gives thanks to the rivers she knew and grew up with in Cumbria. Proceeds from this book go Save Windermere, campaigning to clean up our rivers.
Lastly, Five is a new anthology from Smith|Doorstop featuring the brilliant emerging poets Helen Bowell, Prerana Kumar, Eva Lewis, Laura Potts and Ruth Yates.
If you’re a poet based in the north or a publisher with a new collection or pamphlet by a northern poet and would like to be considered for future versions of this round-up, please get in touch with [email protected].
All Bookshop.org links above are affiliate links. View our full Autumn 2024 affiliate list here.