In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Impact

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

“I don’t think it’s speaking to anything that’s destructive to the self, or to the reader, to consider the things that are in these poems”.

In this video, A.J speaks about the process of creating Unmothered, and the impact of its cover and content, with editor and Arachne Director, Cherry Potts.In this video, A.J speaks about the process of creating Unmothered, and the impact of its cover and content, with editor and Arachne Director, Cherry Potts.

See the full cover for Unmothered below, and find out more about artist Kevin Threlfall on Instagram.

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event:

 

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Myth

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

Here A.J tells us more about the mythological inspiration behind Unmothered, including the fierce women from myth who appear in the collection as icons of unapologetic female agency and justified anger.

Gorgon 

Certain things should be approached
side-on, with a darting gaze,
as you look at a bright goddess
from the corner of your eye.

My mother is a figure ablaze
at the edge of sight; I cannot bear her
head on. I need a sickled blade.
I need a shield, mirror-bright.

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event:

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Creatrix

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

In this week’s video, A.J reads ‘Creatrix’, the opening poem from Unmothered, and speaks to Cherry Potts about the significance with which we imbue motherhood, and how our mothers shape us.

Creatrix

Mothers, first creators,
try to shape us in their own image,
or what they wish they were.

Feel the dip
of finger marks, moulding
muscle and bone like clay.

Our bodies belong not to us
but to the women who

grew us
fed us
know us

enough to end us with a word.

What terror and awe.
And after all, aren’t men
afraid of God?

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event:

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Inspiration

To celebrate forthcoming publication of Unmothered by A.J Akoto, we caught up with A.J to talk about every aspect of her debut collection, from the inspiration behind it, to her use of myth, and the complexities and challenges of writing about your own life.

We’ll be releasing chunks of this conversation every Monday lunchtime for the next few weeks. First up, A.J speaks to Cherry Potts about the initial inspiration for Unmothered, and how it was born from a need to speak into the silence that surrounds difficult mother-daughter relationships.

Publishing on 13th July, Unmothered is an intimate and unflinching collection that tracks the complex bind of mother-daughter relationships. Through separations and attempts to mend, longing and the fluidity of myth/story-telling in defining histories and identities, she collapses the elision between womanhood and mother/daughterhood.

Every word in this stunning debut collection deserves its place on the page. Akoto skilfully stitches fragments of love, along with forgiveness, compassion, and insight, into the fabric of her life.” Louisa Adoja Parker

Pre-order your copy of Unmothered now or book to join us at an event:

Independent Bookshop Week 2023

We’re really pleased to be joining forces with Brixton bookshop, Round Table Books, for a week of events in celebration of Independent Bookshop Week 2023, and of the brilliant community of independent publishers, booksellers, readers and writers in South London.

Independent Bookshop Week, which takes places from 17 – 24th June, is a Bookseller’s Association campaign, designed to celebrate and promote indy bookshops and all they do to keep the UK book trade diverse, eclectic and engaged with local communities.

We love getting know our local independent bookshops (as well as those further afield!) so we’re delighted to be hosting four events at Round Table Books during Independent Bookshop Week, showcasing recent and forthcoming Arachne Press titles. All the events are free to attend:

Sunday 18th June, 6.30pm: Writers from Arachne Press anthology, Where We Find Ourselves: Poems and Stories of Maps and Mapping from UK writers of the global majority. Nikita Chadha, Farhana Khalique, Lesley Kerr, Emily Abdeni-Holman, L Kiew and Mallika Kahn will read their own and one others’ work from the anthology, discussing what inspired their own piece and why they chose the other to share. Book now.

Monday 19th June, 6.30pm: Writing LGBTQ+ Joy with poet Jeremy Dixon. Ahead of the submission deadline for Arachne Press’ LGBTQ+ poetry anthology, Joy//Us, (October 11th) join poet and co-editor Jeremy Dixon for a workshop on writing queer joy. Suitable for all levels of poetry experience, this is an opportunity to explore the theme of queer joy, and perhaps produce a poem to submit for the anthology. Jeremy Dixon’s latest collection, A Voice Coming From Thenwon the Wales Book of the Year English language poetry category in 2022. Pre-booking essential, book now.

Tuesday 20th June, 6.30pm: Poetry reading with AJ Akoto. Debut poet AJ Akoto gives a pre-publication reading from her forthcoming poetry collection UnMothered (13 July 2023), followed by a Q and A session with Round Table Books Co-Director, Meera Ghanshamdas. Inspired by a desire to break the silence surrounding difficulties in mother-daughter relationships, UnMothered uses storytelling and myth to capture the complexity, and contradictions, that define the mother-daughter bond. Book now.

Thursday 22nd June, 8pm: poet Rhiya Pau reads from her award-winning debut collection, Routes. Exploring the routes taken by Rhiya Pau’s parents and grandparents across multiple countries to arrive in the UK, Routes lays bare the conflicts of identity that arise from being a member of the East African-Indian diaspora. Book now.

Free tickets to all the events can be reserved on Eventbrite and books will be available to buy, and get signed, at Round Table Books.

Meera Ghanshamdas of Round Table Books said:

‘We are delighted to be partnering with Arachne Press for Independent bookshop week, not only are they really local to us, but we are on very much the same page (pun deliberate) on the importance of inclusive publishing. Arachne’s focus on LGBTQ+ and disabled writers, as well as their championing of Global Majority writers, sits really well with the aims and ethos of our organisation. I’m really looking forward to meeting all the authors who will be reading or running workshops with us.’

We are really looking forward to being involved in #IndieBookshopWeek and hope to see you at one of the above events. And remember, a bookshop is for life not just Independent Bookshop Week! 

Crab Pots and Coffee: Writing The Arctic Diaries

As publication of The Arctic Diaries approaches, we spoke to poet Melissa Davies to ask about the inspiration for her debut collection and her experiences on Sørvær – a tiny island in a remote Norwegian archipelago.

Here we are, The Arctic Dairies is about to go out into the world and what am I feeling? 

In this moment, I find myself thinking often about the people living on Fleinvær. The handful of residents, the weekenders and friends I’ve spent another winter with. I picture them reading it and try to imagine what they will feel. After all, every poem sits in their landscape, not mine.

Listen to Melissa Davies read ‘Bird Wife’, on location in Norway

The Arctic Diaries truly started in the spring of 2017 with a Facebook post asking ‘Do you want to live and work in the Arctic?’ to which I replied yes! Months later a Skype call with the jazz musician who founded an artist retreat on Sørvær (one island in the archipelago of Fleinvær) and in November 2018 I was on a plane to the north of Norway to run The Arctic Hideaway for two months….which turned into six. My husband and I landed in the middle of an arctic storm to quickly learn the way of life here: weather rules winter and it is futile to resist that fact.

Sørvær is one of two year-round inhabited islands in the archipelago and during that first winter we spent many of the cold afternoons of polar night with the only other couple overwintering there. It was over kaffe, lefse and boknafisk (semi-dried cod) that I heard the tales that eventually became The Arctic Diaries. The book really began to form when I realised that many of these stories—eroded through family retelling—would disappear with the passing of the people we came to call friends. Not just traditional or folk tales but vocabulary unique to the landscape, ways of living and happenings that continue to tell us how it is to be here.

However, I don’t see The Arctic Diaries as an archive. The characters I’ve written are fictional, they are not two dimensional drawings of the people I met, I could never do them justice. Instead, I hope that readers will take from each poem what they need, along with a raised awareness or reminder of what we are losing as industrial fishing and fish farming continue to devour Norway’s coastline.

Having said that, the book is also a diary of my first winter on Fleinvær. An exploration of being ‘other’ and the personal demons I was facing at the time so I kept the diary title, structure and dates.

As someone from rural Cumbria, it was interesting to see so many of the difficulties facing Fleinvær and wider Nordland county reflected in the issues facing my own home. I write about the coastal Arctic because it’s the landscape that speaks to me but many of the poems sing a mourning song familiar to the fells too. So as you dive into sea orms, crab pots and eider nests please remember, The Arctic Diaries is only the first chapter in a project that has more to give, especially as art cements a place in the forward momentum of climate activism and Europe swirls with questions of borders and migration.

Pre-order a copy of The Arctic Diaries through our shop.

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Online Festival

To celebrate our tenth anniversary we are having an online festival throughout January 2023, mostly weekends and Thursdays, although a couple of Tuesdays and Fridays have snuck in.

We invited our authors and friends to run the events they wanted to see, to set their own prices and number of tickets. It’s quite an eclectic mix, readings, discussions and workshops for writers, and about writing, or the business of being a writer. We invite you to join us! Visit the Eventbrite Collection

Saturday 07/01/2023 11:00-13:00 Cath Humphris
Why Flash Fiction? (Writing Workshop)
12 places, donation recommended £5
details and tickets

Saturday 07/01/2023 17:00-19:00 Readings from authors
Hiatus eBook Launch
95 places, FREE
details and tickets

 

Sunday 08/01/2023 19:00-21:00 David Turnbull
Longevity In Fiction: Time Bestowed, Time Stolen (discussion)
30 places £6
details and tickets

 

 

Thursday 12/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Jackie Taylor
Writing the Climate: Questions for Writers (discussion)
12 places free/donation
details and tickets

 

 

Friday 13/01/2023 19:30-21:00 Diana Powell, Melissa Davies & Sherry Morris
Three Takes on Place (reading)
95 places free/donation
details and tickets

Saturday 14/01/2023 11:00-13:00 workshop Elizabeth Hopkinson
Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret (workshop)
12 places  £8
details and tickets

 

 

Saturday 14/01/2023 15:00 reading/open mic/discussion Jeremy Dixon & Cherry Potts
Joy//Us LGBTQ Poetry
40 places  free/donation
including 10 open mic spots of 3 mins each – max 2 poems!
details and tickets

 

Sunday 15/01/2023 15:00-16:30 Lowri Williams
Translating poetry from Welsh into English (workshop)
suitable for advanced learners of Welsh and native speakers.
10 places – pay what you can £3/£5/£8
details and tickets

 

 

Tuesday 17/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Kavita A Jindal
Emotion as Ignition (workshop)
20 places £20
details and tickets

 

 

Saturday 21/01/2023 12:00-1:30 Neil Lawrence
Resilient writers (workshop)
10 places £20
details and tickets

 

Saturday 21/01/2023 15:30-17:00 DL Williams, Lisa Kelly, Mary-Jayne Russell de Clifford
Deaf Poetry and BSL translation
20 places Free/Donation
details and tickets

 

 

 

Tuesday  24/01/23 18:00-19:30 The Business of writing– The Society of Authors This is very kindly being run for us by two of the coordinators of the  Society of Authors Poetry & Spoken Word group: Johanna Clarke and Mathilde Zeeman

free tickets

Thursday 26/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Nikita Chadha
The Empire Writes Back: “Space, place and belonging” Interactive lecture/workshop
15 places £10
details and tickets

 

Friday 27/01/2023 18:30-20:00  Seni Seneviratne
Using family history/photos as inspiration for poetry (workshop)
20 places £12-£20
details and tickets

 

 

Sunday 29/01/2023 11:00-13:00 discussion/reading Clare Owen
Cormorants and #cornishgothic: creative ways to write about YA mental health.
15 places £5
details and tickets

 

Sunday 29/01/2023 15:00-16:30 workshop Saira Aspinall
Marketing on a tight budget for writers
12 places £10
details and tickets

 

 

Discovering ourselves in soil and sky on National Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day and the theme this year is The Environment. To celebrate, we asked poet Claire Booker about her relationship with the natural world, and the way she represents it in her new collection, A Pocketful of Chalk:

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in awe of the natural world: its endlessly creative
hutzpah; the refreshing disinterest it has in our little human concerns.

A Pocketful of Chalk came together from what I could see was a build-up of poems
connected to natural phenomena. By nature I also include the dream world, which arises
from our inner natures. Dreams are forces inside us which we ignore at our peril, just
like the forces outside us.

Five years ago I moved to the village of Rottingdean just outside Brighton in East
Sussex. I’d spent three decades living and working in south London, which is
particularly blessed with woodland and open spaces. Urban nature is a force for change,
because it offers millions of people a relationship with the wild which they wouldn’t
otherwise have. By virtue of its fragile hold within the city, urban nature is also a potent
symbol of what we’re losing.


Moving to a rural, farming area, placed me right in the middle of wildness (it can get
pretty wooly up there on the Downs if a storm’s coming!). But even this wildness is
under threat. During this year’s drought, the wheat fields were scorched, newly planted
woodland saplings dropped their leaves, there were tiny, misshapen black berries. Then
the rains came in biblical proportions, and top soil was lost.

As humans, we’re in a unique position. We’re part of nature, but also the enemy outside
its gates.

So what, as a poet, can I do about this? Very little, in reality, but even that little is worth
going for. Poetry can take you to the heart-beat of emotion. It can remind people of
what they’ve lost, or fear losing, or want to fight for. Above all, poetry offers quiet
contemplation, an enrichment of understanding – questions that could do with answers,
answers that need questioning.

The environment is us, it’s our relationship with each other, made manifest. We live in a
rushed, frenetic, some might say, frantic world. Poetry can help us draw breath, stop,
consider, appreciate. I find that by simply walking along the sea front, or up on the
Downs, the world starts to unravel a little. I get to see the same places over and over
again. But of course, they’ve never the same place more than once. And when I feel a
poem start to pupate, I pick up my pen. Learning about the planet, is learning about
myself.

So in A Pocketful of Chalk, there are poems about evening shadows on the Downs, and
how we can be stretched by light. There’s a poem about drought and how the loss of
plants is like losing children. There’s a young child who is impatient with her little
radish patch, but then flings herself onto the soil to listen to the seedlings grow. There
are poems that are fantastical, apocalyptic, about a drowned world, and others that look
at rain as a flow of emotions. Some of the poems are persona poems where I imagine
what it’s like to be a wild creature. I find it fascinating to try and enter a world without human parameters. After all, the best poetry leaves ego behind, and that’s always worth
striving for.

At times, in the face of the night sky, or mesmerised by a murmuration of starlings,
even the idea of writing can seems absurd. The very first poem in the collection,
ironically, is about just that. When you’ve seen the “the impossible exactness” of a
Marbled White butterfly, words can seem a pointless add-on. As Ted Hughes wrote in
Poetry in the Making: “It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or
rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in
the crow’s flight.”

So that’s the challenge. To be part of nature, yet at the same time its observer and
protector. Poems live as much between the lines as in them – surely an ideal medium for
expressing such a paradox?

Not crows, but herons… watch Claire Booker reading Grey Heron at the launch of A Pocketful of Chalk:


#NationalPoetryDay is the annual mass celebration on the first Thursday of October that encourages everyone to make, experience and share poetry with family and friends. www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk

Arachne Press at Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival

We’re pleased to announce that we will be at Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival on Tuesday 17 May with a panel event based on Where We Find Ourselves: Poems and Stories of Maps and Mapping from UK Writers of the Global Majority.

Join us at Clapham Library for readings and a Q & A discussion with:

Ngoma Bishop

Marina Sánchez

Nikita Chadha

Farhana Khalique

Rick Dove

Emily Abdeni-Holman

L Kiew

The event is free, but ticketed.  Book your tickets here.

You will be able to buy a copy of Where We Find Ourselves at the event, or you can buy one from our webshop now.

A470 launches

Eat your heart out Route 66, we’ve got the A470, and the poems to prove it!

We are holding a bilingual ONLINE launch for A470 on 3rd March (World Book Day) at 7pm.

Line up: Adele Evershed, Cas Stockford, Ness Owen, Sian Northey, Angela Graham, KS Moore, Rae Howells, Becky Lowe  Siôn Aled, David Mathews, Seth Crook, Simon Chandler, and Sammy Weaver.

free tickets, and copies of the book

2pm Saturday 23rd April 2022/ 2pm Dydd Sadwrn, 23ain Ebrill, 2022
Our first in person event/ Ein digwyddiad cyntaf â phawb mewn ystafell
Bilingual readings by poets/ Darlleniadau dwyieithog gan feirdd
plus open mic

Caffi Soar
Canolfan Soar, Pontmorlais,
Merthyr Tudful, CF47 8UB
Line up: Nicholas McGaughey, Des Mannay, Gareth Writer-Davies, Sian Northey, Matthew MC Smith, Mike Jenkins, David Mathews, and provisionally, Sara Louise Wheeler and Becky Lowe.
free, just turn up