Bøker utgitt av Nine Pens

These are clear-eyed, quietly formal poems, moving from memories of a beloved grandmother stolen by Alzheimer's, through to the joy and anxiety of new fatherhood in a role very different to that of the previous generation. They explore the love and tension that exists within families and communities, bearing the weight of expectation and change. But there is humour too, especially when reality collides with the dream of travel, work and finding love. Oliver has crafted tender, intergenerational poems that capture "the sweet spot / the moment in-between, when night / hands-over to morning's light".

Lay down your flowers and raise up your fists...Deborah Finding's debut poetry pamphlet, 'vigils for dead and dying girls' takes the feminist slogan 'the personal is political' to heart, as it approaches sexual violence and inequality as both painfully individual and deeply systemic.Dark humour, magic and witchcraft play their part in the tales told here, whether the fate of fairy tale characters in a mental health institution, or a girls' brunch-turned-hexing session with some of mythology's most powerful goddesses. Music is also a key theme throughout: providing the backdrop to a sexual assault, used as a tool for healing, and providing the rhythm of a feminist protest anthem.Poems drawn from front-page headlines of violence against women - such as the high-profile murders of Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman - and associated misogyny in policing, legal and media institutions sit alongside broader reflections on the insidious cultural abuse of women and girls. Societal pressures, sexist tropes and the constant threat and fear of violence faced by women are depicted with deftness and wit as Finding draws on her professional and academic expertise in gender and trauma to create an easily accessible space, in which the radical truth-telling and rigour required for these highly-charged topics is balanced by compassion and care for her audience.'vigils for dead and dying girls' is a display of anger, empathy and solidarity: each poem standing as a candle shining light into a dark place, but also offering hope for a better future.

Family Name features three unique poets - Jenny Mitchell, Roy McFarlane, and Zoë Brigley - who consider the act of naming, alongside explorations of family, whether biologically linked or chosen. They also question how names are twisted and debased to dehumanise in domestic and historical settings. Mitchell conjures the experiences of mothers, grandmothers and foremothers who practise an inherent alchemy to recover power and autonomy, especially in relation to the body. She examines how identity may be stolen, but can also be hard-won. McFarlane returns to forebears dedicating poems to Chet Baker, Sylvia Plath, the men of the Ellesmere Canal Yard, and, in the moving 'Haibun for The Fields', to Ishmael Zechariah McFarlane ("my life father"). McFarlane also tackles language, place and conquest, as in 'Call me by my name' where a hurricane refuses the Briticised monikers (Charlie, Gilbert, Dean) allotted it. Brigley's poems explore Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): her life, her family and the background that created this pioneering feminist. Wollstonecraft is so much more than suggested by Horace Walpole's callous naming of her as a "hyena in petticoats". Family Name offers a call to arms, a refusal to accept injustice and a determination to reclaim identity as a site of power.

'The Opposite of Grieving brings together the talents of three poets who collectively run the publishing outlet Drunk Muse Press. There the similarities in their theme and style end. Hugh McMillan's poems are mostly lyrical meditations on a father's relationship and travels with his daughters, while Neil Young's satires rewrite and reimagine Greek myths with a contemporary twist, and Jessamine O'Connor's selection explores a gamut of responses to loss and bereavement. Each poet's work is characterised by an angled approach that causes the reader to re-examine expectations.

EX-CETERA presents an intense and intimate portrait of a romantic relationship, charting its chaotic course from the early days of heady, all-consuming young love, through to the inevitable break-up.Relaying the sweet, shocking, and sad ephemera collected from the wreckage by the speaker of these poems, here is a book of opposites. Toxicity and tenderness intertwine. Passion struggles against psychotic illness. Happiness sits alongside violence. Fun and laughter are found among fear and mental breakdowns. The roles of 'victim' and 'saviour' become interchangeable. Carer turns abuser. Hope dwindles to despair.Exploring themes of severe mental illness, suicidality, self-harm, domestic abuse, and addiction, EX-CETERA immortalises the minutiae of one explosive love in savage detail and invites the reader to decide how far is too far when all you want is to be loved.

All About Our Fathers is the second collaboration of three poets exploring their relationship with a parent in all its complexities.From a father's vice like grip on youth, a cigar tamponing his lips, a smell of gunshot as he enters the kitchen, these fathers evoke memories embedded in the senses. Blue eyes glimmer in the green-screen night as fathers drive towards a rocky beach or a field of honey locusts as if intent on healing the conflict between shadow and light.

All About Our Fathers is the second collaboration of three poets exploring their relationship with a parent in all its complexities.From a father's vice like grip on youth, a cigar tamponing his lips, a smell of gunshot as he enters the kitchen, these fathers evoke memories embedded in the senses. Blue eyes glimmer in the green-screen night as fathers drive towards a rocky beach or a field of honey locusts as if intent on healing the conflict between shadow and light.

In this exciting new pamphlet, Ben Verinder takes flight to survey the human landscape. At times sad and strange, at others darkly funny, these poems are marked by a deft use of language, surprising conceits, an elegant music and a riot of birdlife. Throughout many of the poems there is a sense of humans and birds uneasily sharing the same space and while this work laments both landscape and loved ones, it opens out into broader panoramas - a Yorkshire maggot farm, the smallest distillery in Scotland, a warehouse full of superannuated waxworks and an international crying competition.This is precise, inventive, well-executed work.

With My Lips Pressed to the Ear of the Earth is a pamphlet full of secrets, whispered stories and confessions. Things that are buried deep frequently bubble up to the surface. As the title suggests this is a pamphlet with a strong eco-theme and the poems tackle serious issues, but never in a solemn way. These are inviting poems that delight in the strange and the surreal. The off-kilter approach can catch us off-guard at times, making us think in new ways about nature and our own relationship to it.These are poems with long roots, inhabiting the present world of Airbnb, Pizza Express and Heat magazine while also delving deep into a twisted pastoralism, stalked by the ghosts of John Barleycorn and Robin Goodfellow along with resurrectionist mushroom men and women trapped in wells.Emma Simon, poetFirst collection Shapeshifter out with Salt in 2023; The Odds, winner of the Poetry Business Competition 2020; Dragonish, the Emma Press 2017.

'All About Our Mothers' is an anthology of poetry from poets Vasiliki Albedo, Mary Mulholland and Simon Maddrell.Vasiliki Albedo's poems have appeared in Anthropocene, AMBIT, Beloit Poetry Journal, Lighthouse Literary Journal, Magma, The Rialto, The Morning Star, Poetry Salzburg Review, Mslexia, The Poetry School brochure and elsewhere. In 2017, she came second in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition (EAL) and joint-third in the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Vasiliki was joint-winner in the Guernsey International 'Poems on Buses' in 2021, commended in the National Poetry Competition 2018 and the Hippocrates Prize 021. Fire in the Oubliette was joint-winner of the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition 2020. She is a member of The Crocodile Collective. Mary Mulholland's poems have been widely published in magazines such as AMBIT, Arc, Fenland Poetry Journal, Finished Creatures, High Window, London Grip, Perverse, Snakeskin, Under the Radar, and in several anthologies. Twice-winner in Poetry Society Members' competitions, she also won the Momaya Poetry Prize, and been commended or shortlisted in competitions including Aesthetica, Artlyst, Aryamati, Bridport, Trim, Wasafiri, Winchester, Live Canon Pamphlet Prize and appeared on several longlists, most recently Fish. Mary holds a Newcastle/Poetry School MA in Writing Poetry, co-edits The Alchemy Spoon, runs Red Door Poets and is a founding member of The Crocodile Collective.Simon Maddrell was born in the Isle of Man in 1965 and raised in Bolton. After twenty years in London, he moved to Brighton & Hove in 2020.He has been published in various anthologies and diverse publications such as AMBIT, Butcher's Dog, Stand, The New European, Morning Star, Brittle Star, The Dawntreader, Perverse, Impossible Archetype. In 2020, Simon was first runner-up in the Frogmore Poetry Prize, longlisted for The Rialto Nature and Place Competition and Poetry London Mentoring Scheme.Also in 2020 Simon's debut pamphlet, Throatbone, was published by UnCollected Press and Queerfella jointly-won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition.

How to decode your orange-peel fortunes is a pamphlet about tiny encounters. It's about the moment the blossom comes into full bloom: perfectly pink, terrifyingly wonderful. It's about going for a walk and seeing an astoundingly white butterfly; it's about noticing roadkill and feeling, just for a moment, life teeter. It's about those moments when the right song comes on at the right time, when nothing else makes sense but your favourite poem, how that can be enough. It's about how entirely good it is when you eat fruit that's so perfectly ripe that everything else in your life glows full of clarity. It's about the time after you've been so sad when you begin to piece a life back together: small beauty by small beauty.The pamphlet also includes a longer piece called 'Conversations with the moon: An essay on poetry', where the speaker talks to the moon, drawing on Amelia Lanyer and Sylvia Plath, luxuriating in the clichéness of it all. The moon doesn't care about our sadness, but we tell it anyway. How human, how brilliant, is that?It is the second pamphlet by Alice Wickenden.

GenderFux is the collaborative work of three immensely talented poets whose work all exists in the same uncomfortable but enduring space. These poems are bursting with the desperation to be heard, and they leave you enveloped in the rich worlds sketched on the page, and the haze of everything else left unsaid in the margins.Holding space for queer trauma, love, sex, and pop culture references, GenderFux is a masterclass in full and complete portraiture that doesn''t leave anything out. It is tongue-in-cheek, brutal, evocative and electric - and will leave you with their words ringing in your ears.Kathryn O''Driscoll, UK slam champion, poet, performer, author of Cliff Notes (Verve Poetry Press, 2022)