Menopause: The Anthology Advance copies have arrived

We have office stock for Menopause: the Anthology! These are mainly going to authors, endorsers and reviewers, (If you are a reviewer and this appeals to you, give us a shout)

We are taking pre-orders for October now!

Gorgeous cover by Kate Charlesworth.

A wild and wonderful mix of poems and short fiction edited by Catherine Pestano and Cherry Potts

Is the menopause really all about hot flushes, empty nests and HRT? Forty-three writers challenge the clichés in poetry and short fiction.

This anthology will be published on Menopause Day, 18th October 2023. When, we have decided, all (post)menopausal women should celebrate their last period, since we never actually know when it happened. Memorial or celebration, you choose, but we will be having cake. Put the date in your diary!

ISBNs: Print 978-1-913665-85-2 100pp £9.99
eBook: 978-1-913665-86-9 £4.00

By turns furious, funny, passionate, elegant, eloquent, sometimes all of these things at once, but always intimate and incisive, this is an amazing collection from a wonderfully diverse range of voices. It absolutely exemplifies what the arts can do to communicate personal experience in a highly political and socially impactful way. I LOVED IT!


Joanna Brewis, Professor at The Open University and menopause at work researcher

Utterly relatable and so, so clever! I love the combination of humour, sadness, anger and strength that shines through the writings of these talented women.


Jackie Lynch, The Happy Menopause nutritionist, author & podcaster

 

This is such an important book. The menopause should not be just a vanilla-sisters, posh white woman conversation. It affects all of us and global majority women often have worse symptoms which start earlier. I found these stories both inspiring and moving. I’m sure you will too.

Eleanor Mills, Founder of Noon.org.uk – home of the Queenager

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.
poetry and stories 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 Sànchez
Martha Patterson
Mary Mulholland
Rachel Playforth
Ruth Higgins
Sian Northey
Susan Bennett
Susan Cartwright-Smith
Tessa Lang
Tina Bethea Ray
Victoria Bailey
Victoria Ekpo

Arctic Diaries online launch- Poems part 2

Here are the final poems from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvær, off the north coast of Norway in poems.

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

They Call Him the Salmon King of Norway

Seaweed

Treasures from the first boat

Bird Wife

Lookout Men

Værøy

Bird wife

 

About Queer Joy… a short video

Co-editor Jeremy Dixon introduces the submission call for Joy//Us, our anthology of poetry celebrating queer joy, and reads a couple of poems that fit the theme, with a short follow up from Cherry Potts about what she is (and isn’t) looking for. If you are thinking of submitting please do so via Submittable before 11th October, and you are welcome to join our free workshops on line in September. Please spread the word!

Q&A from online launch of More Patina than Gleam & Saved to Cloud

Queer poet Jeremy Dixon quizzes fellow Arachne poets, Kate Foley and Jane Aldous for the online launch of their new poetry collections, Saved to Cloud, and More Patina Than Gleam, on process, inspiration, being ‘vintage lesbians’ and what their mothers would have thought.

 

Are you an LGBTQ+ poet? Inspired by our gang of queer poets?

We have a submission call for Joy//Us, our LGBTQ+ poetry of Queer Joy anthology right… here on Submittable

Arctic Diaries online launch- Q&A part 2

Here’s the second half of the Q&A from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvær off the north coast of Norway in poems. Melissa, a Cumbrian native, talks about the impact that Fleinvær has had on her writing and her life, complete with map and live feed to the island! The poems read at the launch will follow…

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

 

Arctic Diaries online launch- Poems part 1

Here are the first poems from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvær, off the north coast of Norway in poems.

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

Collectors

Coffee

The Fisherman remembers a Boy Disappeared

Halibut

 

Guardians

Fleinvaer is Made up of 365 Islands

Vanishing Act

Arctic Diaries online launch- Intro and Q&A

Another slow start on my part – here’s the first half of the Q&A from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvaer of the north coast of Norway in poems. Melissa, a Cumbrian native, talks about the place, people and stories that inspired the book. The rest will follow, when it’s been captioned!

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

 

Saved to Cloud launch video part 2

I’ve been woefully slow to get the videos up for all the launches this year, but captioning takes an age, and there’s been a LOT happening, I still have miles of footage to work through!

So here, at last, is the second half of the videos for Kate Foley’s launch of Saved to Cloud at Keats House (to whom thanks, for their continued support)

A marvellous mix of observation of human frailty, and anger at what we are doing to the planet.

Thanks to Anne Stewart for taking over videoing when my phone decided to play up!

 

There is no Planet B

 

Tree Speak

 

Toolbox

 

Slow Water

 

Rosebay Willowherb

 

Lines

 

Limping

 

Learning a Language

 

Politics

 

Saved to Cloud launch video

I’ve been woefully slow to get the videos up for all the launches this year, but captioning takes an age, and there’s been a LOT happening, I still have miles of footage to work through!

So here, at last, is the first half of the videos for Kate Foley’s launch of Saved to Cloud at Keats House (to whom thanks, for their continued support)

A marvellous mix of observation of human frailty, and anger at what we are doing to the planet.

Thanks to Anne Stewart for taking over videoing when my phone decided to play up!

Education of the Heart

 

At Cafe Welling

 

Repeated Patterns

 

Our Old Lady

 

on being 80 plus

In the Cave at Niaux

 

Apocalypse

 

Edinburgh explored in poetry part 2

Jane Aldous‘s latest poetry collection, More Patina than Gleam, is a strange book – it tells interlinking love stories set in Jane’s home town of Edinburgh, and was inspired by Jane’s 70th birthday, and something her mother said when Jane was a child.

The 70th birthday link was to write 70 poems – sonnets, but Jane’s mother’s input was to say that she often thought she should have run away from her marriage when she was young, and take Jane with her.

From this Jane creates the story of Linda, a runaway, and her daughter, Ange, arriving in Edinburgh from England in the early 60’s to become Lady’s Companion to Elsie,

an elderly, refined woman in a house that is held together by will-power and love – more patina than gleam.

When Jane talks about the book, one of the loves she never mentions is her own – for Edinburgh. Her love of the place shines out from every page, and I suspect she’s never noticed it, so ingrained it is.

Some of the places she talks about in the poems are long gone, or wilt behind hoardings, but on the afternoon of Thursday 10th August, Jane is taking people on a poetry walk around some of the locations that feature in the poems, the Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill and Pond, Observatory Road, finishing with tea at West Mains Allotments…

A novel way to experience a book!

Tickets (free, or you can pre-order a book to pick up on the day, or have it sent to you) via eventbrite