New and Recent Poetry from the North: Spring 2026
This spring sees the release of loads of new poetry from Northern Writers’ Award winners, alongside other brilliant poets across the North. Hear from our poetry expert Will Mackie about some of the collections worth picking up.
Melete (Bloodaxe) is the debut collection by the exceptional poet Jennifer Lee Tsai, a Northern Writers’ Award winner in 2020. Jennifer’s collection follows on from her absorbing and expansive two pamphlets, Kismet (ignitionpress) and La Mystérique (Guillemot). The poems in Melete reflect on Jennifer’s upbringing in Liverpool, migration, memory and family history. This collection is published in May.
Carson Wolfe is an outstanding poet from Manchester who won a Northern Writers’ Award in 2023. Their chapbook, Coin Laundry at Midnight (Button Press), is packed with striking poems propelled by a questing narrative and featuring memorable characters and vivid slices of Americana. Poems like ‘I Take My Midwestern Penpal to a Gay Bar’ and ‘Ghost Story’ are utterly compelling, reminding me of how poetry can still surprise, enlighten and create vivid, lasting impressions.
The Natural Way is the debut collection by Roma Havers, who won a Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry in 2024, and has just been published Carcanet. These are innovative, often funny and dazzling poems that feel alive and full of purpose.
Rue Collinge’s pamphlet How to Train Your Dragon is recently published by Verve and won the Disabled Poets Prize. Rue’s rich and textured poems exploring living with disability are highly recommended.
Emergency Dream (Seren) is the new collection by Polly Atkin, published in March. A Northern Writers’ Award winner in 2020, Polly Atkin is a skilled poet and a strong, unflinching voice for disability justice. She has a talent for blending personal narratives with wider social concerns, and a commitment to investigating the complexities of nature in a climate-threatened world.
Ella Peebles’ debut collection, Watch Us Begin, takes the reader on a coming-of-age journey from adolescence to early adulthood, charting change, shifts in identity and the learning we must do as we grow. Each poem is accompanied by a watercolour by Leah Audrey Bainbridge and this collection will have resonance for anyone figuring out their path through life.
Kym Deyn is a North East-based poet and novelist, and a recent recipient of a Jerwood Fellowship at New Writing North. Their always exciting and lively poetry is powered by an original and adventurous imagination. Kym’s collection, Folkish, is published by the brilliant Nine Arches in April. I’m massively looking forward to losing myself in the alternative universe of Kym’s poetry.
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].
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