We send in all our poetry collections to the Forward Prize as a matter of course, whether as entrants for best overall poetry book of the year, or as best first collection. Up until now, they’ve smiled sweetly and moved on. This year, however, two poems from those collections were picked to go in the anthology and ‘highly commended’.
Congratulations, AJ Akoto (Daughterhood from UnMothered), and Rhiya Pau (Salutation, from Routes)!
Back when we first started asking people to submit to Menopause: The Anthology, we said
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.
And now with the launches approaching, I’m starting to think about what kind of cake Menopause cake would be.
My go-to-cake for launches (partly because it travels, and cuts thin slices that hold together, well) is a chocolate/almond/brandy affair which comes with serious health warnings. Everything a person might be alllergic to is in it. It is also glorious.
This seems like a good starting point for a menopause cake to me. I’m thinking it should also have coffee in it, to up the ante. (Something I can’t cope with – I can’t drink it, but I can, sometimes, eat things flavoured with it.) But also something cooling – but what? Yoghurt?
I’ve made variations before – the one above is Solstice Cake, where one half is the main recipe and the other half is ginger/orange/almond, which through complex cutting and splicing creates the four seasons, or day/night/dusk/dawn depending on how you want to think about it.
What variations should be included in Menopause Cake?
Let me know what you think!
An occasional drop in with what our writing friends are up to, because they happen to tell us.
David Turnbull (as obsessed with time as we are) is running some poetry walks around Waterloo for National Poetry Day next month details and booking
Ruth Bradshaw is running a nature writing workshop in Deptford TOMORROW. It includes an opportunity to explore some of the local wildlife as well as do a bit of writing. details & booking
Clare Starling has won the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award and her pamphlet is due out soon preorder here.
Download our Tenth Anniversay report (annual report) for photos and details of (almost) everything we’ve done this year, from our epic Book Cover Art Exhibition to BSL poetry workshops and quite a few books! Find out what’s gone well, what the people we surveyed think, what’s gone not so well, and what we’ve got planned.
Click to access 10th-Anniversary-Report.pdf
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 £4.00By 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!
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.
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
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
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!
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
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!
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
