New and Recent Poetry from the North: Summer 2023

The poetry scene in the North is vibrant and eclectic, with writers and publishers based here producing exhilarating and compelling new work.

A highlight for me is The Ink Cloud Reader (Carcanet) by Kit Fan, a Northern Writers’ Award winner for Poetry in 2022. These are deeply thoughtful, original, moving and narrative-driven poems that can stun you with their precision and striking imagery.

Yvonne Reddick’s much-anticipated Burning Season (Bloodaxe) is a lyrical and personal collection that tackles challenging ecological questions in dextrous and elegantly crafted poems. Yvonne also previously won a Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry.

Patterflash by Adam Lowe includes Manchester-rooted poems and displays the poet’s versatility, energy and astute powers of observation. Patterflash is published by Leeds-based Peepal Tree who have been throwing a spotlight on amazing new work for decades.

Also from the wonderful Bloodaxe Books is Out of Sri Lanka, the first anthology of Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry to be published in English. This expansive and exciting anthology is edited by Shash Trevett, Seni Seneviratne and Vidyan Ravinthiran, all either currently or recently based in the North, and includes poems by new poets alongside older work, some of which was previously out of print.

David Spittle’s new book, Decomposing Robert, is published by Black Herald Press. This long poem uses elements of Robert Browning’s poetry alongside David Spittle’s own philosophically charged 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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