About the Book
Do poets make good detectives? Find out by following their feats of deduction, in this set of ten wildly varied accounts of mystery and murder. See them soften the tight lips of witnesses, squeeze the hearts of suspects, and wrestle with the muddledness of the inner life exposed. Watch for their subtle skill, but also for the all-too-human weaknesses and maddening contradictions that all honest poetry (and all good detective fiction) holds up, glintingly, to the light.
About the Author :
Jon Stone is a Derbyshire-born writer, editor and researcher. He won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2012 and his collection School of Forgery (Salt, 2012) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. As well as writing several shorter poetry books and co-editing a number of collaborative anthologies with Sidekick Books, he has published a monograph, Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Videogames (DeGruyter, 2022). He teaches writing and publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. Kirsten Irving is a Lincolnshire-born, London-based poet and voiceover, and one half of the team behind collaborative press Sidekick Books. Her work has been published by Salt and Happenstance, widely anthologised and thrown out of a helicopter. She has won the Live Canon International Poetry Prize, judged competitions, and taught courses on folklore in poetry. Kirsten's latest collection, Hot Cockalorum, was published in 2022 by Guillemot Press. From https://chloestopahunt.net:
Chloe Stopa-Hunt is a poet, occasional critic and disability activist. She was educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, editing the 2013 Mays Anthology and winning an Eric Gregory Award in 2014. Now mostly confined to bed, she is rarely able to give public readings, but welcomes continued digital contact where possible.
White Hills (Clinic, 2016) was the LRB Bookshop’s Pamphlet of the Year, and one of the Poetry School’s books of the year. Poems and translations have appeared in journals including Ambit, Magma, Poetry London, Envoi, Poem, Oxford Poetry, and Eborakon.
Online poetry publications include The White Review, Tender, Clinic, Poems In Which, Visual Verse, and Ink Sweat & Tears.
From https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/helena-nelson/:
Helena Nelson is a former teacher in further education and still works occasionally as an Arvon tutor. She founded HappenStance in 2005 as an independent small press, specialising in publishing poetry in pamphlet form. The press publishes often first-time collections by poets from the UK and in 2010 it won the Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets.
From https://tlth.co.uk/:
Livia is a writer and translator from Tuscany, Italy. She is the author of a poetry pamphlet, Our Available Magic (Makina Books, 2019) and a novel, Shelf Life (Doubleday, 2019), and has translated Lorenza Mazzetti, Stevie Smith and James Tiptree Jr., among many others. Livia is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, where she also coordinates The Goldsmiths Prize, and has taught both poetry and fiction internationally.
From https://ilsepedler.com/about:
Ilse Pedler is a poet and veterinary surgeon. She lives and works in The Lake District trying to juggle writing with the unpredictability of sick animals.
She has also been a Morris dancer for over 30 years and no longer tries to hide it.
She has had poems published previously in many magazines including, Stand, Magma, Poetry News, and several anthologies. She was shortlisted in The Rialto Nature Poetry competition in 2014 and 2015 and in the Bridport prize 2016 and commended in the Hippocrates 2017. She is the winner of the 2015 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition. Her pamphlet, The Dogs That Chase Bicycle Wheels was published by Seren in March 2016. She was long listed in the National Poetry Competition in 2018 and is the poet in residence at Sidmouth Folk Festival . She lives and works as a Veterinary Surgeon in near Kendal. Her first collection, Auscultation, was published by Seren in 2021
From: https://vervepoetrypress.com/2021/05/10/geraldine-clarkson/?v=79cba1185463:
Geraldine Clarkson is from the UK Midlands, with roots in the West of Ireland. She has three poetry chapbooks, including a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and a Laureate’s Choice. Her work has featured in many anthologies including Furies: A Poetry Anthology of Women Warriors (For Books’ Sake, 2014) and Witches, Warriors, Workers: An anthology of contemporary working women’s poetry (Culture Matters, 2020).
She has performed poems at the Royal Albert Hall, broadcast for the Proms Extra Lates on BBC Radio 3, and also at several festivals, the Poetry Society AGM, and at poetry venues in London, New York, Dublin and Edinburgh. Her first full collection was with Monica’s Overcoat of Flesh, Nine Arches Press 2020.
From https://nathanielspain.co.uk:
Nathaniel Spain is a writer, artist, and designer, based in Tyne and Wear. He has lived in the North of England for the past decade. He studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University, completed an MAR in English Studies at Durham University in 2017, and has a CertHE in Design and Innovation. He has worked for Inpress and the Poetry Book Society, and is currently working on an environmental project in the charity sector.
In September 2023, Nathaniel’s co-authored pamphlet, Unfurl, was published by The Braag. This followed his self-published zine of speculative fiction, Fragments (2021).
Nathaniel’s short stories have appeared in Carmina Magazine, Gastropoda, Carmen et Error, Provenance Journal and The Fiction Pool. He was the guest editor for Carmen et Error’s 5th issue, and a first reader for Hexagon magazine in 2023. He was a juror for the 2023 British Fantasy Awards. Nathaniel also designs tabletop games under the Stoneshore imprint.
From www.mathewlyons.co.uk:
Mathew is a writer and historian based in East London. He studied English Language and Literature at Leeds University, where he went on to take an MA in Renaissance Literature. He is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
His last book, The Favourite, was the first book-length exploration of the love affair between Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I. Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves, chose it as one of her books of the year.
His previous book, Impossible Journeys, a collection of travellers’ tales about journeys to places that do not exist, was compared by The Guardian to a ‘non-fiction Calvino’. Prior to that, he wrote There and Back Again: In the Footsteps of JRR Tolkien, described by Professor Tom Shippey as ‘an excellent guide not only to Tolkien’s actual real-life physical environment, but also to his deepest feelings about England, about landscape, about history and prehistory’.
Mathew currently writes the Months Past column for History Today. He has written or reviewed for a wide range of other publications including the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, BBC History, Slightly Foxed, The Stage, The Author, Literary Review, The Quietus, The Economist, The Critic, The Tablet, The Times, Renaissance Studies, Catholic Herald, All About History, New Humanist, and The Chap. His poems have been published by Reliquiae, Atrium, Dawn Treader, Bad Lilies, The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, and Ink, Sweat and Tears, among others.
Mathew has been profiled in The Yorkshire Post and The Herald in Scotland. His media appearances include Sky News, ITN, CBC, BBC Radio London (Robert Elms), LBC (Sandi Toksvig), and a wide range of regional radio stations including BBC Radio Wiltshire, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cornwall, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Radio Oxford, BBC Radio Jersey, BBC Radio Bristol and BBC Radio Manchester (GMR).
He has spoken at the London Book Fair, Words on the Water, Chiswick Book Festival, Sharjah International Book Fair, Essex University, Bath Spa University, and numerous local history, library and book-shop events.
He also performed in the Dolphin’s Back production of Marlowe’s Massacre At Paris at the Rose Playhouse, as well as at the History Show-Off stand-up evening and at Wunderkammer, hosted by the Do Not Adjust Your Stage improv group.
From https://lukepalmerwriting.com:
Luke Palmer is a poet, author and secondary school teacher and a graduate of the Bath Spa Creative Writing course. He lives in Wiltshire with his young family. His novels Grow and Play are published by Firefly Press.
From https://www.mercurius.one/home/anne-laure-coxam-surreal-absurd-sampler:
Anne-Laure Coxam is a French-born poet living in Edinburgh. She had work published in various magazines, her pamphlet Toolbox Therapy was published by Sad Press in 2016, her first full collection the male and the female poet go to the surgery in exciting times was published by Blue Diode Press in 2022. In addition to poetry, she wrote and delivered bilingual performances about relationships, politics, poets and languages.
