About the Book
What started as a complaint about the '40-line rule' in much of the poetry world has turned into an anthology that not only breaks that rule, but stomps all over it. Featuring 25 poems which break the rules - these are long, narrative, but by no means traditional poems, by contemporary voices.
Themes both great and small are explored in narrative poems that pack a punch. Human interactions from conversation, storytelling, lending and borrowing, theft, prayer, memory, shopping and a long walk, right through to sexuality, time travel, truce negotiations, disappearance, natural disaster, violence and death are all explored, many of them rooted in landscape and place. These lie alongside equally rooted mythological and historical tales drawn from Greece, Turkey, Africa, Scandinavia and Britain.
What draws all these themes together is the strength of the storytelling. Emotions as diverse as frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, hope, nostalgia, anger, and fear are channelled through spectacular poetry in many different forms into truly satisfying work.
About the Author :
Cherry Potts is the Director of Arachne Press, for whom she is editor of almost all our anthologies and runs the Annual Solstice Shorts Festival.
Cherry is the author of an epic fantasy novel, two collections of short stories, a photographic diary of a community opera, and has had many stories in anthologies, magazines and online. Her novel of sibling hatred in the 1920s, The Bog Mermaid, won the Quill LGBTQ+ Prose prize 2022.
Kate Foley is a widely published, prize-winning poet and former president of Suffolk Poetry Society. She has read in many UK and European locations. Her first collection, Soft Engineering was short listed for best first collection at Aldeburgh.
Her working life has ranged from delivering babies to conserving delicate archaeological material. She became Head of English Heritage’s scientific and technical research laboratories. Although she has always written poetry it wasn’t until she gave up the day job that she began to publish more widely.
She now lives with her wife, between Amsterdam and Suffolk, where she performs, writes, edits, leads workshops and whenever possible works with artists in other disciplines.
Anne Macaulay was brought up in rural, northern Scotland but, since meeting her husband in the 70s, has embraced urban life in East London. Proud mother of two grown up children, with 30 years immersed in Education, she now wants to focus more on her writing and loving the Arts!
She has had several poems and a short story published in the last 3 Loose Muse anthologies.
Anne has poems in The Other Side of Sleep and Menopause: The Anthology
Anne is one of 6 poets featured in Vindication for which she provided the title.
Cathy Bryants lives near Manchester and her previous publications include two single author poetry collections published: Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature and Look At All the Women. Over 200 poetry and short story publications in magazines and anthologies – all kinds of publications from The Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to My Father Lost Me to the Beast at Cards! Emma Lee was born in South Gloucestershire and now lives in Leicestershire. Her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in many anthologies and magazines in the UK and Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and USA,.
Emma has performed her work at The Poetry Cafe in London, all three Leicestershire universities, at LCFC, the Jam Factory in Oxford, Hatherley Manor in Cheltenham, amongst other venues. She's also read poems for BBC Radio and EAVA FM and joined panels organised by the University of Leicester's Sociology, Communications and Media department to talk about artistic responses to the refugee crisis arising from her co-editing of "Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge" and curation of Journeys in Translation.
Emma Lee's poems have been translated into Chinese, Farsi, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Romanian.
Currently she is on the committee of Leicester Writers' Club and the steering group for the Leicester Writers' Showcase and has experience in organising poetry readings and live literature events. She has given workshops for Leicester Writers' Club, Leicester Poetry Society and the Local Writers' Fair. Emma Lee also reviews for five poetry magazines and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com.
Jennifer A. McGowan lives in Oxford. Despite being certified as disabled with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome at age 16, she became a semi-professional mime artist and performed until the disability became too much. Recently she has worked as researcher, editor, and writer for a UK company in 'devil’s advocacy'. She has taught both under- and postgraduates at several universities, across English, history, and heritage studies.
Jennifer’s first full collection 'With Paper for Feet' was published by in 2017, and her follow up HOw to be a Tarot Card (Or a Teenager) in 2021 She has poems in Arachne anthologies 'The Other Side of Sleep' and 'No Spider Harmed in the Making of this Book'.
Jennifer’s poems have also appeared in literary journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Connecticut Review, Gargoyle, Storm Cellar, Envoi, Acumen, and Agenda; her chapbooks, 'Life in Captivity' and 'Sounding' are available from Finishing Line Press. Her work has been anthologized in 'Birchsong' (Blue Line Press, 2012), 'A Moment of Change' (Aqueduct Press, 2012), and Arachne Press’ 'The Other Side of Sleep'. Her songs have been recorded on several labels.
Jeremy Dixon was born in Essex and spent 45 year in rural South Wales making Artist’s Books that combine poetry and photography. He now lives on the Wirral. His poems have appeared both online and in print in Roundyhouse Magazine, Riptide Journal, Lighthouse Journal, Durable Goods, and Really System, among others. Arachne Press published his first poetry pamphlet, In Retail, and his first full collection, A Voice Coming From Then, which won the Wales Book of the Year 2022 Englsih Language Poetry Category Math Jones currently lives in Worcestershire although he was born in London and lived in Oxford for many years. A pagan in the Old English and Norse tradition, he often writes poetry on the stories and in the metres of that tradition. He also writes more usual verses, performing throughout the Midlands and London. A bookseller for many years, he retrained in 2008 to be an actor, and has been acting professionally since then, as Math Sams. He has understudied a major role in a West End show.
Math is the author of The Knotsman
Math has published poems in Melpomene, Northern Traditions, Ripples, Decanto, Iota, Be, Hex, Ravenbred, Lina, The Wain, Withowinde, Kvasir, Pagan Dawn. Collections: Eaglespit (self-published) and Sabrina Bridge, (Black Pear Press)
Previous poems with Arachne Press in anthologies The Other Side of Sleep; Dusk and Time & Tide
Sarah Lawson was born in Indiana and educated at Indiana University and Glasgow University, but has lived in London since before decimalisation. Her poems, translations, and book reviews have been published widely. Her translation of Christine de Pisan’s Treasure of the City of Ladies (1406) was its first English translation (Penguin Classics). Her translation of Moratín’s El sí de las niñas was performed at the Prince Theatre in Greenwich, and her own play, ‘Gertrude, Queen of Denmark’, a feminist take on Hamlet, was performed at the Lion and Unicorn in Kentish Town. Her poetry collections are Below the Surface (Loxwood Stoneleigh, 1996) and All the Tea in China (Hearing Eye, 2005); Hearing Eye has also published her pamphlets, Twelve Scenes of Malta and Friends in the Country, and a haiku collection, The Wisteria’s Children (2009).
Sarah has a poems in The Other Side of Sleep and No Spider Harmed in the Making of this Book, and a short story in Departures
Sarah is one of six poets featured in Vindication.
