Fair Acre Press – förlag

Cartoons for grown upsMeet Matt Hazard - an ordinary man trying not to be defined by his job

Endorsed by Hunt Emerson

About the Mattoonist

Paul “kieltyascharged” Kielty is an Irishman living in the midlands of England.Paul worked for many years, first on the factory floor, then rising to the dizzying heights of foreman before jacking it all in to follow every Irishman’s dream – to leave their beloved country. His excuse was that he was offered an animation degree at the University of Wolverhampton.He started an M.A. but holding 2 jobs down (Animation technician, and warehousing) to pay the rent and university fees finally meant he took up warehousing/ labouring/ factory work full time, once more... though always dabbling in Stand-up comedy, M.C.-ing at burlesque nights, singer-songwriting and recording, drawing, painting, and developing his origami skills in his spare time.2018 sees him “coming out” as an artist – with this, his first book of MATTOONS – and a high-end visual art exhibition in Qube gallery, Oswestry, August 2018.

When a thunderstorm’s dark reverberations glimmer ‘in the night-sky of the head’, or when apricots generate an edible appreciation of ‘soft time’, we discover Charles Bennet’s lyrical and powerful poems revealing the impact of nature in memorable, unexpected and sometimes unusual ways.

This fascinating collection concerns itself with forms of melting: fluid interfaces between natural and human environments. Beginning and ending in gardens, it explores aspects of experience informed and affected by close observation. Time and again, whether in the form of a blackbird’s tuneful message, a seashell’s glossy interior, or the smell of fresh rain, our relationship with ecology is reinvigorated. Delighted, rapturous and occasionally disturbing, this is a collection enthralled by the sensual delights of the natural world and its creatures.

"‘should we / have been listening more / and listening harder?’ Charles Bennett wonders in ‘Planting Apricots’.  

But it’s difficult to imagine poems that listen more closely than these to the ‘green music’ of the natural world.  

At play is a sensibility which – alert to happenstance and to the lives of plants and creatures – willingly finds a common ground that furnishes moments of quiet transcendence.  

The vivid precision of the image-making attests to the thoughtful rigour of this poet’s attention. 

A sow was never before  ‘like a lake of treacle’ but will always be so now."

 Katharine Towers

This anthology offers a unique insight into the real experiences of the people at the heart of the NHS – from the student nurse at the start of his career to the heart surgeon on the eve of her retirement. We also hear the stories of those whose vital work is often unseen and unsung from domestic cleaning staff to sign language interpreters. The poems offer unflinchingly honest and intimate accounts from the people who care for us from the moment of birth to the end of life. In crystallising the most beautiful and painful moments of being human, they speak directly to all our experience. Above all these poems are about our shared humanity. They are about the compassion and care that lie at the heart of the NHS and in all our lives. They also serve as a stark reminder of the human cost of trying to offer compassionate care in a system that is underfunded and understaffed and the importance of showing the same compassion and support to the staff we depend on to hold the NHS together.     Leading UK poets have donated poems to this anthology including Michael Rosen, Roger McGough, Lemn Sissay, Sabrina Mahfouz, Kate Clanchy, Sam Guglani, Charly Cox, Molly Case,  Wendy Cope and the estates of UA Fanthorpe, Dannie Abse and Julia Darling.   All proceeds from this book will go to NHS Charities Together which supports over 135 official NHS Charities raising money for NHS hospitals, ambulance services, community and mental health services across the UK. 

Stella Wulf's A Spell in the Woods contains powerful, compelling poems of natural observation: of seeing and listening to the world around us and recreating their second life in language.

David Morley

In A Spell in the Woods, Stella Wulf shows herself to be a worthy successor to Ted Hughes, Mary Oliver and Andrew Young. As a pictorial artist we might not be surprised that she has such a clear-eyed focus upon the natural world, but what an ear she has as well! These are poems that need to be read aloud, and repeatedly, to savour their intricate harmonies. Seemingly timeless, they are all too urgently contemporary in a world we are polluting with 'the silt of entitlement, a flood of insouciance.'

David Cooke