Wayne Holloway-Smith – författare

‘Powerful… Intense and unforgettable' MAX PORTER‘I’m blown away… An astonishing work' AMY KEY‘Amazing… Truly a feat' RAYMOND ANTROBUS‘Devastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles’ Guardian--A transfixing, heart-rending work which follows a mother and her young son living under the shadow of an all-consuming domestic threat, by T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Wayne Holloway-Smith.24 Coalbrook Street. The house is trembling with a father's anger. It makes a rabbit of a young boy, sends him burrowing into a wardrobe, and leaves his mother standing hapless and mute over the kitchen sink. In this house, how far can a mother’s comfort travel?From the safety of his hiding place, from the magnitude of his fear, a young girl appears offering a way out. Taking him by the hand, reaching through time, she leads him elsewhere; a mother’s love dreaming him away from their reality to the promise – beautiful yet flickering – of a river.Haunting, precise and tender, RABBITBOX heralds a major new work from one of Britain's most exciting writers.--‘It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.’ - JOELLE TAYLOR

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‘Powerful… Intense and unforgettable' MAX PORTER‘I’m blown away… An astonishing work' AMY KEY‘Amazing… Truly a feat' RAYMOND ANTROBUS‘Devastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles’ Guardian--A transfixing, heart-rending work which follows a mother and her young son living under the shadow of an all-consuming domestic threat, by T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Wayne Holloway-Smith.24 Coalbrook Street. The house is trembling with a father's anger. It makes a rabbit of a young boy, sends him burrowing into a wardrobe, and leaves his mother standing hapless and mute over the kitchen sink. In this house, how far can a mother’s comfort travel?From the safety of his hiding place, from the magnitude of his fear, a young girl appears offering a way out. Taking him by the hand, reaching through time, she leads him elsewhere; a mother’s love dreaming him away from their reality to the promise – beautiful yet flickering – of a river.Haunting, precise and tender, RABBITBOX heralds a major new work from one of Britain's most exciting writers.--‘It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.’ - JOELLE TAYLOR

Welcome to the grandest part of London, where you can enjoy the sights and tastes of the West End and discover some of its hidden historical gems. In the company of Rupert Holliday Evans you can really experience first-hand this vibrant area, alongside some fascinating archive material. Be dazzled by the glittering array of shops and vibrant restaurants in Chinatown, with its effervescence and tangible atmosphere. Soho is a magnet for the disreputable and the diverse, and it's where you'll find history threaded with a seediness that still attracts notoriety to this day. Stop off at one of the restaurant, bars, cafes or clubs in Old Compton Street (named after Henry Compton, the saintly Bishop of London) before visiting Soho Square - synonymous with Thomas de Quincey and opium-taking in the 19th century. Head to Frith Street and the homes of Mozart, television and Ronnie Scott's legendary jazz club. And then imagine the Marquee still standing in Wardour Street - the birthplace of British rock music Don't miss Shelley's house in Poland Street before stopping off at the London Palladium, where you can picture all the greatest showbiz stars that have performed there. Perhaps do a little shopping in Liberty - one of London's leading emporiums. Partake in some more retail therapy in Regent Street then leave the shopaholics behind and witness the glitzy heartbeat of London's West End in Piccadilly Circus. Soak up the atmosphere in Piccadilly - one of London's most legendary streets before taking some time out at St James's Church, where William Blake was baptised. Then finally, don't miss the Royal Academy of Arts followed by the ultimate luxury: tea at the Ritz.

The mischievous and often dark world of Wayne Holloway-Smith's first collection Alarum exists in the space between the peculiar thought and its dismissal. It is a place in which commonsense is unfixed, where the imagination disrupts notions of stability. 'A single crow falling from the mind' of the poet is something awkward left at our feet, and the 'air itself' is the voice of skewered unease. The complexities of life are jolted awake throughout this fearlessly inventive debut, as loss arrives played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a movie, the risk of romance is understood as the filling in a sandwich, and anxieties are found hunkered in bushes, blooming behind the wallpaper, and in the bursting of balloons.

The mischievous and often dark world of Wayne Holloway-Smith’s first collection Alarum exists in the space between the peculiar thought and its dismissal. It is a place in which commonsense is unfixed, where the imagination disrupts notions of stability. ‘A single crow falling from the mind’ of the poet is something awkward left at our feet, and the ‘air itself’ is the voice of skewered unease. The complexities of life are jolted awake throughout this fearlessly inventive debut, as loss arrives played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a movie, the risk of romance is understood as the filling in a sandwich, and anxieties are found hunkered in bushes, blooming behind the wallpaper, and in the bursting of balloons.

Wayne Holloway-Smith's second collection Love Minus Love is an internal universe, fragmented and glued back together with uncanny logic. A strange layering of time, in which multiple things happen at once, in a looping track of intrusive thoughts – shot through with dead cows, pop songs, dead dads, the white noise of televisions – rotten teeth are raining everywhere. Somewhere at the core of all this, the seemingly fixed boundaries of masculinity, family, trauma and mental health are blurred towards a new type of vinegary identity, in a pitch of emotional intensity that punches you right in the gut.Wayne Holloway-Smith's debut collection Alarum was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize and the Roehampton Poetry Prize as well as being a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice. His poem 'the posh mums are dancing in the square' – included in Love Minus Love – won first prize in the Poetry Society's 2018 National Poetry Competition. Love Minus Love is shortlisted for the 2020 T.S. Eliot Prize and is also a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice.

In Lasagne, acclaimed poet Wayne Holloway-Smith moves between internal and external landscapes with pace, panache and vulnerability. This short collection of poems is a defibrillator resurrecting a small part of the universe at each new twist: a silent scream rearranging the flowers in a window, the miracle of a near-dead cow sprung back to life and feeding orphans, tears coming at the speed of cars. When these poems hit, you hardly see it coming.