New and Recent Poetry from the North: Summer 2024
What poems have you been loving recently? We can always rely on brilliant recommendations from our Senior Programme Manager, Will Mackie. It’s time for his latest selection, featuring loads of fantastic collections from Northern poets for you to get your hands on.
I’d strongly recommend Helen Farish’s wonderful new narrative-driven collection, The Penny Dropping (Bloodaxe). These often exquisitely lyrical poems are intimate and personal, tracing the course of a close relationship and holding your attention throughout.
Coco Island is the Jamaican-set debut collection by Christine Roseeta Walker (Carcanet). This is a varied and exciting collection, rich with storytelling and captivating visual landscapes.
Rhizodont is the new book from Katrina Porteous (Bloodaxe). This detailed and wide-ranging collection, while rooted in the North East, explores global landscapes and themes of ecology and community.
Earwig Country, the excellent new collection by Angela Topping (Valley Press), examines elements of mental health and memory.
Alan Payne moves thoughtfully between Yorkshire and the Caribbean in Mahogany Eve (Smith|Doorstop).
The York-based poet Doreen Gurrey won the 2023 International Book & Pamphlet Competition for the A Coalition of Cheetahs (Smith|Doorstop).
Brilliantly titled The Apothecary of Flight by Northumberland-based Jane Burn is published by Nine Arches in July.
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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