Search results for ""Arachne Press""

what if / I actually - am - a bird / my cupped hands / opening to release me... Phil Barnett's relationship with birds is so close that his poetry blurs the distinctions between himself and the birds - a kind of ornimorphology where rather than giving the birds human characteristics, the reverse happens, and he imagines himself as a bird. Phil Barnett is a photographer, writer, musician, artist and naturalist, who has a passion for the birds that kept him company through a long hard illness. His photography and poetry have quite a following on social media, which is where we found him, on The Daily Haiku. His skill as a photographer leads to an acute visual sensibility, and his slow recovery moves from a tick sheet his mother had to fill in for him, to extraordinary poetry - full of wit and wonder and spectacular language.

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This series of poems, based in post war Edinburgh, tell the story of Linda, fleeing with her 11 year old daughter from England and an abusive relationship. In hiding as a lady’s companion in one of the city’s suburbs, mother and daughter settle into their new life in Elsie’s rackety house, and encounter a variety of characters who will change their lives forever. More Patina than Gleam celebrates outsiders getting by in hard times – the day to day grind of cleaning a house, periods, prejudice, ageing, sexuality and falling in and out of love. The poems are not autobiographical, but Jane Aldous, whose own mother used to say that she could have run away with Jane when she was a baby, has gently torn scraps from her own life to add to the collage.

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Stories and poems from thirty-nine UK based writers of the Global Majority from African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Carribean, South American, Chinese and Malay communities write about maps and mapping. Stories and poems of finding oneself and getting lost, colonialism and diaspora, childhood exploration and adult homecoming. Authors: Alexander Williams, Alireza Abiz, Amanda Addison, Ambrose Musiyiwa, Anita Goveas, Be Manzini , Benson Egwuonwu, Catherine Okoronkwo , Crystal Koo, Dean Atta, Des Mannay, Desiree Reynolds, Dipika Mummery, Emily Abdeni Holman, Farhana Khalique, Gita Ralleigh, Kavita A Jindal, L Kiew, Lesley Kerr, Lorraine Dixon, Lorraine Mighty, Malka Al-Haddad, Mallika Khan, Marina Sanchez, Marka Rifat, Meng Qiu, Mimi Yusuf, Nasim Rebecca Asl, Ngoma Bishop, Nikita Aashi Chadha, Chadha Oluwaseun Olayiwola, P.A.Bitez, Rachael Chong, Rhiya Pau, Rick Dove, Sami Ibrahim, Sandra Nimako, Yvie Holder, Z.R. Ghani

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There is a double meaning in the title to this debut collection from Jane Aldous – Jinn was her family nickname, and writing poetry feels like letting out her wild, mischievous spirit.For Jane, poetry is all about listening, and she invites us to listen to the imagined worlds of hunter-gatherers, star-gazers, mythical beings, wild creatures, the living and the dead, and the real world of a gay woman growing up in the 70s.

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Stories and poems about leaving, and being left behind; or that take an unexpected turn, going completely off piste. From authors featured at The Story Sessions, the South London live literature evening. Stories from Emily Bullock, David Steward, Helen Morris, Nic Ridley, Barbara Renel, Carolyn Eden, Cherry Potts, VG Lee, Liam Hogan, Becky Ros, Joan Taylor-Rowan, David Mathews, Sarah Lawson, Oscar Windsor-Smith and Zoe Brigley. Poems from Kate Foley, Gloria Sanders, Nancy Charley, Joy Howard, Math Jones and Elinor Brooks.

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Ness Owen lives on Ynys Môn off the North Wales coast. This is her first collection, and is partly bilingual. The poems journey widely from family and motherhood, to politics, place and belonging: an underlying connection to the earth of Ness' home, that feeds a longing/desire/determination to write in the Mamiaith (Mothertongue) that she speaks, but did not learn to write fluently. The interplay of languages and the shifts of meaning from one to the other feed the musicality of the poems.Most of the poems were written in English, five have been additionally translated into Welsh (with help from Sian Northey) one was written in Welsh and translated into English by Ness.

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Story Cities explore ways in which stories respond to, reflect and re-imagine the city. Explore new short fictions in multiple genres that address the city. A guide book to the fictional city, all cities, any city: its markets, squares, cafés, hotels, parks, stations and ports; the main streets, side streets, back alleys dead ends and the crossroads. Never identified, the city has a voice of its own.Includes work from writers in Australia, Eire, Indonesia,Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, USA, and right across the UKAnnabel Banks, Melaina Barnes, Laura Besley, Maja Bodenstein, Jayne Buxton, Sarah-Clare Conlon, Rosamund Davies, Roland Denning, Liam Hogan, Cath Holland, Belinda Huang, Catherine Jones, Aisling Keogh, Jess Kilby, Jasmin Kirkbride, Stuart Larner, Wes Lee, Emma Lee, Cathy Lennon, Ash Lim, C.A. Limina, Máire Malone, David Mathews, Nicholas McGaughey, Rachael McGill, Dave Murray, Pedro Basso Neves, Alexandra Penland, Cherry Potts, Matthew Pountney, Arna Radovich, Kam Rehal, Jane Roberts, Reshma Ruia, Jesse Sensibar, Shamini Sriskandarajah , Miriam Sorrentino, Stuart Larner, Patty Tomsky, Evleen Towey, Nic Vine, Rob Walton, Steven Wingate,

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Everyone thinks of noon as being a split second as the clock's hands draw together, the bell tolls twelve times - but there is so much more to it than that - Solar noon happens as much as half an hour either side of what the clock tells you, deadlines are met, or passed, shadows vanish, vampires hide - or do they? Stories and Poems from 2018's Solstice Shorts festival, read live in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Ynys Mon, Carlisle, London and Cork on the stroke of... or nearly, Noon. Featuring stories from Barbara Renel, Clare Shaw, Diana Powell, Elaine Hughes, Karen Ankers, Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier, Liam Hogan, Lily Peters, Marka Rifat, Patience Mackarness, Roppotucha Greenberg, Su Yin Yap; and poems from Alison Gerhard, Alison Lock, Anne Elizabeth Bevan, Catriona Yule, Elinor Brooks, Gareth Culshaw, Graham Burchell, Ian Grosz, Jane Aldous, Laila Sumpton.

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The Duke looks out from his castle, and everything he can see for miles and miles belongs to him. Everything, except one small strong house, with a small garden two goats and a beehive. They belong to the old woman from Friuli. The Duke wants that house, but the old woman, she won’t sell. She’s from Friuli, where all the really stubborn people come from.Ghillian Potts is now 83. She has been writing continuously, both prose and verse, since she was 7. She once got out of a bit of housework by saying, “Must I, Mum? I’m writing a Poem!” in her best whine. To her amazement, her mum at once said, “Oh, all right, I’ll do it!” Obviously, writing was a Good Thing. She had a number of stories for younger children published in the 1990s, one of which featured on Jackanory. Illustrator Ed Boxall is an artist, print maker, writer and creative educator living in Hastings, England.

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Nine years after the loss of her sister, and near obliteration of her clan in an ill conceived raid, Brede, a plains’ nomad, is living unwillingly in the marshes. The sudden ending of a decade long drought, brings with it many changes; rumour has it that the rain was bought at the price of a King’s head, and the sword needed for such a sacrifice is missing.Change comes for Brede in the arrival of Tegan, a wounded mercenary.Brede’s discovery, first of the Dowry Blade and a stolen horse, and then of Tegan’s history, sets in train a journey to the capital in search of her missing sister and leads to an unexpected role in the Queen’s household, and a powerful lover.

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Just as Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book reworked Kipling’s The Jungle Book for a modern audience with a liking for the supernatural, Devilskein & Dearlove is a darker, more edgy, contemporary reworking of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic The Secret Garden. An orphaned teenager is taken in by a reluctant distant relative, and in her new home makes an unexpected friend and finds a secret realm. It has shades of the quirky fantastical in the style of Miyazaki’s (Studio Ghibli) animated films like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle (originally a novel by Diana Wynne Jones).Alex says “As a child The Secret Garden was one of my first favourite novels - one of the first I relished reading by myself. Although Devilskein & Dearlove is very different, it was inspired by that novel and its themes.”“Alex Smith’s quirky imagination knows no bounds.” - André Brink

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Short fiction and poetry inspired by walking and the places you can only reach by walking. Join our authors in the urban lives of alleyways, the secret ways between hedgerows and the well trodden paths to the local shops.

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In an intimate and unflinching collection, A J Akoto tracks the complex bind of mother-daughter relationships. Through separation and attempts to mend, longing, and the fluidity of myth/story-telling in defining histories and identities, she collapses the elision between womanhood and motherhood/daughterhood, bringing to the forefront that which usually remains unspoken.

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The South Downs lie at the heart of this collection - the sunsets and huge skies, cliffs and fossils, fishing vessels and windmills, people and sheep. Past, present and future collide within geological and emotional landscapes. Life erupts magically out of plum trees. Love is as friable as chalk, and as deeply underpinned. A lost father is redeemed through the gift of a chocolate rabbit, a loved one returns in the shape of a trombone. Mothers, both human and animal, prove their strength. Not just another 'nature poem' collection, Claire's poems are vigorous, challenging, uncompromising. She ties urban landscape and life in Brighton into a discourse on the way the ground under our feet impacts on how we live our lives - chalk downland is an unquestionably specific ecology, which is of course why South Downs is a National Park. A Pocketful of Chalk bursts with myth and metaphor, energy and originality. The giant of Wilmington leaves his hillside in an apocalyptic vision of global warming. Herons and Ospreys take flight, and a boy releases monsters from the sea shore. A cow really does jump over the moon. Claire Booker offers moving and memorable poetry from an iconic corner of England.

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On a wasted island in perpetual sun, the Father practices magic, laments his lost kingdom and commands a ragtag army of three: the passionate and damaged Daughter, the winged Spirit and an indigenous being known only as C. Behind their uniforms — white suits and full-face paper masks — the soldiers seethe with rebellion.The arrival of the Boy, a hapless prince, and the Brother, the Father’s rival, unleashes desire, betrayal, insanity and revenge — all of it witnessed by an irate sea.Paper Crusade is a bold reinvention of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. Michelle Penn’s vivid imagery and startling, sensual language create an unforgettable dystopia for our own time.

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Set in Cornwall, coastal erosion and flooding take on a near mythical power as the short stories in this collection weave in and out of the recent past and near future, as lives and relationships ebb and flow with the tide. From one maritime tragedy to another, the community, and three generations of women from the same family, struggle with their over-close affinity for the sea.

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November 2018 marks the centenary of the end of WWI. After all the commemorative works of art over the past four years, we felt it was important to reflect on what comes after - an outbreak of peace, and what that means to the combatants and those left at home. This wide ranging collection brings together stories and poems from many countries, on both sides of the 1914-18 conflict, find their inspiration in many wars and their endings.

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Kate Foley is a much published and respected poet with many awards to her name. This, her 8th collection is made from meeting, migration and marriage: poems reflecting the journey of one poet and her wife, across linguistic and geographical boundaries - and with Brexit in the offing, it's far from over yet.

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Sixteen short stories that chart the meaning of time, and explore what it can do to us, and for us.Broken hearts, lives lived on fastforward, missed chances, and catastrophic meetings on the road. Time stolen, time wasted, time captured and time lost. A warning from the past, a second that changes a life, a failed glimpse into the future and a study of funeral rites. Ready-made families, weekly liaisons, and an all-night radio show.From the First ever Solstice Shorts Festival originally read live in 2014 on the Greenwich Meridian, on the shortest day of the year, from sunrise to sunset.

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WINNER of Saboteur 2014 - Best AnthologyThere's something about Liars' League that brings out the wildness in the writers' imaginations. Here we explore myth, fantasy, science fiction, and the indefinable what the - that makes up Weird. In true Liars' League fashion there is as much humour as there is darkness and poignancy. More than twenty tales, varying in style from stories not out of place in One Thousand and One Nights, to the completely bemusing. Discover mirrors that predict the immediate future and museums where your personal future life is exhibited in the kind of ephemeral objects that might normally find their way into a dustbin. Meet tadpoles, lazy assassins, and assiduous poisoners; observe deals with the devil, and workplace stress taken to its logical conclusion. Heroes, villains, and animals - anything and anyone could provide the twist in the tale - cursed travellers, persistent dreamers, aliens, robots and even ice might be the object, or source, of love. Stories from: Alan Graham, Alex Smith, Angela Trevithick, Andrew Lloyd Jones, Barry McKinley, C.T.Kingston, Christopher Samuels, David McGrath, David Malone, David Mildon, Derek Ivan Webster, Ellen O'Neill, James Smyth, Jonathan Pinnock, Joshan Esfandiari Martin, Lee Reynoldson, Lennart Lundh, Maria Kyle, Nichol Wilmor, Peng Shepherd, Rebecca J Payne, Richard Meredith, Richard Smyth, Tom McKay

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From the mean streets of Hackney to sleepy South London suburbs, from boho Bloomsbury to City wine bars, London Lies is a tour of the capital as you've never seen it before. Moving from 1930s Camden to a Royal Wedding "riot," via football fights, office steeplechases and awkward dates in art galleries, London Lies is a bizarre, funny, moving and sometimes unnerving glimpse into the secret life of the city we all love and know.Featuring nineteen writers and twenty-three stories showcased at award-winning monthly live literature event, London's Liars' League

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An anthology of stories and poems chosen for performance at the Sosltice Shorts Festival 2019, in Greenwich, Maryport, Hastings, Peterhead, Clydebank, Holyhead and Lisbon.How do tides affect our lives? How has that changed through history?An exploration of making a living on or by the sea – fishermen and pirates, wreckers and dockers – and making a new life across the sea – escaping pograms and wars, and the endlessly travelling – and of paddlers and wild swimmers.

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When Rob Walton went into lockdown, he didn't know that he would also go into mourning. Here he writes about the life and death of his dad, and how sadness seeped into various aspects of his life. He also manages to find cheap laughs, digs at the government, celebrations of the young and old, unashamed sentimentality and suddenly disarming moments of tenderness. Arachne Press first read some of these poems on Rob's Social Media. As they kept appearing, giving voice to what many of us were thinking about life and bereavement in lockdown, we had to ask...

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Liars' League teams up with Arachne Press for a second outing bringing the freshness, wit, imagination and passion of their authors to a wider audience. This book is designed expressly for romantic cynics and cynical romantics. Be careful who catches you reading it - your intentions might be misinterpreted. Join us as we wallow in the many facets of relationships. Explore role-play gone wrong, goldfish that eat loneliness, and a very literal leap into the unknown. Old love, cold love, true love, new love, dead love, we're through love - making babies and making whoopee, disappointment and contentment, playing at home, playing away or just playing; missed chances and new romances: everything from first conversation to last breath, strange journeys and stranger destinations.

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Frustrated by working under lockdown and worried that the 2020 festival might not happen, Arachne Press decided to continue as though everything would be alright, and asked writers to something that responded or reacted to or was inspired by a sixteenth century poem that editor Cherry Potts has always found comforting in a crisis: Robert Southwell's Tymes Goe by Turnes; or that responded or reacted to or was inspired by some concept in it. The poem observes the ebb and flow of fortune, nothing stays bad for ever, nor anything good - so get on with it while you can. And they have. Oh, they have. This isn't exactly a response to Covid-19, but there's an echo there - in Katie Margaret Hall's epic train journey, New Orleans To Vancouver, and Jackie Taylor's Rewilding; but there is also concern for the environment, and relationships and lives in need of nourishment they are finding hard to find. As with Southwell's poem there is a fine balance between dread and hope. stories and poems from:Brooke StanickiC.L. HearndenClaire BookerElinor BrooksJackie TaylorJane AldousJane McLaughlinJulian BishopKaren AnkersKatie HallKeely O'ShaughnessyKelly DavisLaila SumptonLinda McMullenLynn WhiteMargaret CromptonNeil LawrencePatience MackarnessPippa GladhillS. B. MerrowSean Carney

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The algorithm of my own life, faded and spidery, is written, not keyed in. From bombsites used as childhood playgrounds to lockdown FaceTime calls, Kate Foley looks back on almost nine decades of life – a life characterised by curiosity, resistance and a strong connection with the natural world. Appreciation and concern for the planet runs through this frank and moving collection, which muses on the notions of faith and belief, ultimately rejecting both Whitehall politics and traditional religion as inadequate to deal with environmental crisis. Simultaneously nostalgic and highly concerned with the future, Kate Foley’s candid reminiscence and simple use of language draw us softly into consideration of life’s big questions: What’s it all for? How will we be remembered? Will it build again, our earth?

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When the fisherman dies Fleinvær stories spill out silver strings, like guts from a spring catch. But between these pages they survive. The Arctic Diaries chart generations of the characters, myths and misremembered details that make up the oral traditions of a windswept archipelago in Norway’s far north. Created over a single arctic winter, using stories gathered from the last surviving fisherman of Langholmen, this collection of poems are part history, part field notes, exploring what role the outsider plays in preserving the experience of another.

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The tarot has been used to play games since the 15th century. Since that time each card has also accumulated meanings. By the 18th century the tarot was used for divination or for oracular purposes, much like the Delphic oracles of old. Nowadays the trumps, or major arcana, are believed to chronicle, symbolically, the journey of the Fool through life. How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager) explores, exploits, and sometimes downright twists the major arcana and the meanings they have accumulated, in the order in which the many hundreds of tarot decks now travelling the world present them. The Star, connoting hope, exists simultaneously as metaphor and feral dog; the rebirth nestled inside the Death card becomes female friendship and escape from patriarchal binds.

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London 1988: Agata grew up in post-war Prague and believes that her mother was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.But not everyone died. Agata's search for her ‘lost’ family, set against the background of revolutions in Eastern Europe, threatens to tear apart not only the family she already has, but her own identity.

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In the red corner: the muck, grit and harsh truths of life. In the blue corner: the beauty of the natural world and the vivid variety provided by imagination. Cathy Bryant is dancing about somewhere in between. To continue the boxing ring metaphor to a silly (but possibly accurate) degree, the other two corners are culture and experience, the canvas is time and I'm on the ropes of conscience.For Cathy is stuck as a misfit. Born in the south, she lives in the north. from a middle class home, she is working class by poverty and experience. She knows what it's like to be homeless, and what it's like to pick a dirty penny off the pavement and be happy to have it, and she also know the correct way to address a duchess, and whether to put the milk in first. She doesn't fit in anywhere - except at poetry events, where you can't know whether the person next to you is a convicted felon, a linguistics professor, or both.

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Brook, now called Spellbinder, is working as Remembrancer to her friend Graycat, now known as Young Overlord Lady Quicksilver, when Storytellers start disappearing. Spellbinder is captured and forced to summon the Elder Dragons, but when she cannot control them, she must break her Storyteller vow and forfeit her most precious possession – her name.

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The Don’t Touch Garden explores what it is to be adopted, both for the child and the adoptive parents, through a wide range of poetic styles and complex emotions.An absorbing account of the legacy of being an adopted child. Forthright and tender, this moving sequence reflects Foley’s unflinching gaze into the mirror in a sometimes excoriating attempt to discern traces of her belonging, and to make peace with the past. Joy Howard, Poet, publisher and former Fostering Services Manager

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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.

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Language has its own relationship to time. When Jennifer falls for Sam at his execution, she doesn't immediately realise that she can still find and live with him; but the city of Tligol has trains that will take you anywhere, including your own past, just as long as you don't leave the city. Jennifer rides the trains, loops around in time and sets an unplanned series of events in motion. For lovers of The City and The City... and Hotel California!

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34 LGBTQ+ Poets explore what Queer Joy means - an explosion of 'I see you' moments by and for our communities.

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At the core of this debut collection is a question – what is worth holding onto?Through poetic experiments that blend the academic and the artistic, Rhiya Pau queries complex characters and tender landscapes. Routes journeys from Ba’s kitchen in Sonia Gardens to Independence hour in Delhi, across the pink shores of Nakuru, to meet a painter on Lee High Road. Celebrating fifty years since her community arrived in the UK, Pau chronicles the migratory histories of her ancestors and simultaneously lays bare the conflicts of identity that arise from being a member of the East African-Indian diaspora. In this multilingual discourse exhibiting vast formal range, Pau wrestles with language, narrative and memory, daring to navigate their collective fallibilities to architect her own identity.'[Routes]...holds up to the light the wisdom of the past, and asks what else is passed down along with it...a work of humane intelligence, formal experiment and linguistic verve' - Sarah Howe, Judge of Eric Gregory Awards 2022

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Arguably the most famous road in Wales, the A470 is 186 miles from shore to shore through the backbone of Wales, linking north to south. Peaceful and picturesque or slow and never-ending: the road out of here, the road home, the beginnings of devolution? Glorious national parks, bypasses, being stuck behind a certain lorry firm or worse, a caravan, the road to the Royal Welsh? From the seashore to slates, from nuclear power stations and fighter plane flypasts to forests and mountains: Bwlch yr Oerddrws, Pen Y Fan. On the road or on a journey, there's no need to take the A470 too literally. Be ydi'r A470 i chi - siwrne dawel trwy harddwch Cymru neu daith araf a diddiwedd? Ai hon yw'r ffordd i adael, neu'r ffordd adref, neu ddechrau datganoli? Parciau Cenedlaethol, ffyrdd osgoi, llusgo mynd tu ol i lori neu waeth fyth garafan, y ffordd i'r Sioe Frenhinol? Traethau, chwareli, pwerdai niwclear, awyrennau rhyfel, coedwigoedd, mynyddoedd, Bwlch yr Oerddrws, Pen y Fan? Taith ddiriaethol ar y tarmac neu daith o fath gwahanol? Does dim rhaid dehongli'r A470 yn llythrennol. 51 original poems, translated into and out of Welsh, to create an entirely bilingual poetry collection. Edited by and translated by Sian Northey and Ness Owen, with additional translations from Sion Aled, and the authors.

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For Solstice Shorts 2021 we invited writers to respond to the growing climate crisis.From an exceptionally strong field we chose stories and poems that respond to the floods and droughts and fires all around the globe with tenderness, compassion, fear, grief and rage. Gaia is represented in all ther power and glory, and butterflies and plants sow seeds of hope, while other writers ask: How do we stop it? How do we survive it? And how do we live beyond the catastrophe on our horizon?Stories and Poems from Angela Graham, Ben Macnair, Cath Holland, Cath Humphris, Cathy Lennon, Claire Booker, Corinna Schulenburg, Diana Powell, Elaina Weakliem, Emily Ford, George Parker, Jane Aldous, Jane McLaughlin, Jared Pearce, Jessica Conley, Jill Michelle, Julian Bishop, Karen Ankers, Kate Foley, Katherine Gallagher, Kelly Davis, Lesley Curwen, Lisa Clarkson, Lucy Grace, Lucy Ryan, Lyndsey Weiner, Mandy Macdonald, Michelle Penn, Natascha Graham, Rachael Chong, Rob Walton, Robert René Galván, Samn Stockwell, Savannah McDaniel, Simon Brod, Stevie Krayer, Tara Willoughby, Tim Dillon, Vanessa Owen, Xia Leon Sloane.

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Poems informed by and immersed in politics. Everything has significance beyond the surface. Beautiful, hair-raising words and form. Emma Lee's The Significance of a Dress moves from Refugee camps in northern Iraq via beaches in Greece and Northern France to dark streets in London and elsewhere, and asks questions about where to find hope, and how to overcome adversity. 'A wedding is a party, a welcome, a sign of hope. The dresses sparkle with sun-reflected diamanté but the gravel paths of the camp leave the hems stained.'

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The Knotsman does not exist, you will not find him in history books or collections of 'bygone' skills. But Math Jones has created him, and his fellows, in a time very like the English Civil War. There he is, going from house to house, village to village, battlefield to gallows, unravelling knots and problems, physical, emotional and psychological; a new kind of cunning man, not always welcome, not always quite as clever as his fingers and picks would have him believe.

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While working in a well-known pharmacy chain, Jeremy Dixon found surprising inspiration. His poems were written on the ends of till rolls and smuggled out in his socks. Anyone who has ever worked in retail will recognise the characters and situations, and the magnificent management absurdities; but Jeremy also bring his perspective as a gay man to bear with witty and wicked results.

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The Solstice Shorts Festival celebrates the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year with time themed stories poems and songs. 2017 saw the festival go UK wide, with 12 sites taking part at DUSK, in a wave of words across the UK from Ellon in Aberdeenshire to Redruth in Cornwall. These are the chosen stories and poems from the festival.

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Originally published twenty years ago, the sixteen short stories in Mosaic of Air reflect and explore Lesbian life in the 1980s through myth, history, fantasy and science fiction. Delving into lecturing spiders, Helen of Troy, seaside libraries, computers that fall in love, murder and memory; but most of all humour, and a delight in all that women can be. Praise for the first edition: Cherry Potts writes with economy, punch, panache. - Ellen Galford Definitely about women in space, not the usual glossy tomboys of standard sf. - Gwyneth Jones Delightful ... both a hilarious spoof of one-man-and-his computer myths such as 2001, a Space Odyssey; and a reflection on the limits of love and power. - Zoe Fairbairns"

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Twenty-four new short stories in homage to the East and South London section of the London Overground Line: a story for every station from New Cross, Crystal Palace and West Croydon at the Southern extremes of the line, all the way to Highbury & Islington. From tigers in a South London suburb to retired Victorian police inspectors investigating train based thefts, from collectors of poets at Shadwell to life-changing decisions in Canonbury, by way of an art installation that defies the boundaries of a gallery, Stations takes a sideways look through the windows of the Overground train, at life as it is, or might be, lived beside the rails: quirky, humorous and sometimes horrifying.

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A showcase for authors Arachne Press has published previously in anthologies, giving a wider perspective on their writing. The collection as a whole has tendency towards fantasy and magical realism, with Cassandra Passarelli’s (Liberty Tales) Guatemalan stories taking on a more gritty reality, and Katy Darby’s (London Lies, Stations, Shortest Day, Longest Night) engrossing SF and historical stories alongside Joan Taylor Rowan’s (London Lies, Lover's Lies, Stations) acid humour and modern desperation and Sarah James’ (Longest Day, Shortest Night) elliptical poet’s sensibility brought to flash fiction and Helen Morris’ (Liberty Tales, Solstice Shorts) ability to get to the heart of a story, and make you laugh out loud or weep inconsolably.

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The subject of Menopause is just beginning to break the barrier of taboo, and become a mainstream discussion point, but that discussion has until now been very serious, medical, and, we would argue, heterosexual and white. This anthology of poems and short fiction aims to address that, with wild and wonderful writing from humour and anger, relief and distress, by women who have experienced menopause, whether naturally or as a result of surgery; with a healthy dose of views from the global majority and the lesbian, bisexual and trans communities. With contributions from Adele Evershed, Alison Habens, Alyson Hallett, Amanda Addison, Anne Caldwell, Anne Eccleshall, Anne Macaulay, Cath Holland, Cheryl Powell, Chloe Balcomb, Claire Booker, Claire Lynn, Clare Starling, Ellesar Elhaggagi, Elizabeth A Richter, Em Gray, Erica Borgstrom, Genevieve Carver, Ginger Strivelli, Helen Campbell, Jane Ayres, Jane Burn, Jane McLaughlin, Jessica Manack, Joanne Harris, JP Seabright, Julie-Ann Rowell, Karen F Pierce, Kavita A Jindal, Kim Whysall-Hammond, Lucy Lasasso, Marina Sanchez, Martha Patterson, Mary Mulholland, Rachel Playforth, Ruth Higgins, Sian Northey, Susan Bennett, Susan Cartwright-Smith, Tessa Lang, Tina Bethea Ray, Victoria Bailey, and Victoria Ekpo.

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A tree falls in the forest and I am/ there to make sure no one hears it./Beloved: It’s not that I am/unwilling to be seized by sound,/ everyday I am undone by it. Khando Langri Our poets and authors were given the theme of Movement. They have intepreted this in many ways: movement as communication and connection, mobility, and stillness, being moved emotionally, movement within and after Lockdown, freedom of movement, and being part of a political movement. Poems, short fiction and scripts from UK Deaf, deaf and hard of hearing writers. Our theme is movement. Stories and poems from Alison Campbell, Ayesha B. Gavin, Bryony Parkes, Charlie Swinbourne, Clare-Louise English, Colly Metcalfe, David Callin, Dee Cooke, Diane Dobson, DL Williams, Elizabeth Ward, Emma Lee, Hala Hashem, Janet Hatherley, Jay Caldwell, John Kefala Kerr, John Wilson, Josephine Dickinson, Julie Boden, Khando Langri, Ksenia Balabina, Liam O'Dell, Lianne Herbert, Lynn Buckle, Maggie Arbeid, Marilyn Longstaff, Maryam Ebrahim, Mary-Jayne Russell de Clifford, Melanie Jayne Ashford, Rodney Wood, Sahera Khan, Samantha Baines, Sarah Clarke, Sarah O Adedeji, Sophie Woolley, Terri Jade Donovan.

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Jeremy Dixon's first full poetry collection A VOICE COMING FROM THEN starts from his teenage suicide attempt and expands to encompass themes of bullying, queerphobia, acceptance and support. Includes unexpected typography, collage, humour, magic, discotheques and frequent appearances from the Victorian demon, Spring-heeled Jack. Shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year English Language Poetry Content warning, some of the poems deal with the themes and the language of physical and verbal bullying, swearing, queerphobia, queerphobic language, attempted suicide and suicide.

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