Anne Caldwell – författare

Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice vigorously engages with the Why? and the How? of prose poetry, a form that is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. With contributions by both practitioners and academics, this volume seeks to explore how its distinctive properties guide both writer and reader, and to address why this form is so well suited to the early twenty-first century. With discussion of both classic and less well- known writers, the essays both illuminate prose poetry’s distinctive features and explore how this "outsider" form can offer a unique way of viewing and describing the uncertainties and instabilities which shape our identities and our relationships with our surroundings in the early twenty-first century. Combining insights on the theory and practice of prose poetry, Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice offers a timely and valuable contribution to the development of the form, and its appreciation amongst practitioners and scholars alike. Largely approached from a practitioner perspective, this collection provides vivid snapshots of contemporary debates within the prose poetry field while actively contributing to the poetics and craft of the form.

Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice vigorously engages with the Why? and the How? of prose poetry, a form that is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. With contributions by both practitioners and academics, this volume seeks to explore how its distinctive properties guide both writer and reader, and to address why this form is so well suited to the early twenty-first century. With discussion of both classic and less well- known writers, the essays both illuminate prose poetry’s distinctive features and explore how this "outsider" form can offer a unique way of viewing and describing the uncertainties and instabilities which shape our identities and our relationships with our surroundings in the early twenty-first century. Combining insights on the theory and practice of prose poetry, Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice offers a timely and valuable contribution to the development of the form, and its appreciation amongst practitioners and scholars alike. Largely approached from a practitioner perspective, this collection provides vivid snapshots of contemporary debates within the prose poetry field while actively contributing to the poetics and craft of the form.

Prose poetry is at the cutting edge of contemporary writing, freeing words from the bounds of traditional poetic grammar and bringing the magic of verse to flash fiction. In this ambitious, ground-breaking anthology, Valley Press showcases new work from a diverse range of UK writers, carefully curated by editors Anne Caldwell and Oz Hardwick.Featuring bite-sized morsels of original writing from newly-crowned laureate Simon Armitage, Jen Hadfield, Luke Kennard, Helen Mort, George Szirtes, Kim Moore, Inua Ellams, Carrie Etter and a host of other new and established talent, this is the ideal travelling companion for readers searching for a mind-expanding literary adventure.

Alice and the North is a sequence of prose poems that form a love-song to the North, its post-industrial landscapes, wild uplands, obsession with weather, seasonal change and awkwardness. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice before her, the lead character shifts and changes as her journey across the North continues; she is at turns playful, sexy, rebellious and adventurous, carving a new identity for the region as she goes.

From herring quines to the hidden corners of Manchester, from Lytham St Anne’s to the canals of Congleton, readers are invited to grow up with Alice as she finds her voice – straddling the territory between prose and poetry, exploring the down to earth cadences of everyday speech and the richness of the North’s many idioms and dialects.

Alice even finds time to gently tease the 'titans' of Northern poetry, Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage, whose voices have long shaped the poetry-reading public's idea of the North. Now, however, they must step aside and make room for Alice.

"Anne Caldwell’s poems are intensely alive, flighty as young animals, powerful and varied as the sea." Alison Brackenbury

"Anne Caldwell’s Alice is at once rooted and flighty, wildly sensual and, in the very best sense, ordinary. As she navigates the Wonderland that is the North, she takes the reader with her through a vividly reimagined place of changing identity. Caldwell is an immensely sensitive poet with a keen sense of both the poignancy and exuberance of life and its tiny moments. In ‘Alice And The North” she has created a compelling poetic narrative, conjured a North that is both strange and familiar and given us a very particular Alice who might also be an everywoman for our times." Amanda Dalton