Flipped Eye Publishing Limited – förlag

What elevates 'teaching my mother how to give birth', what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times - as in Tayeb Salih's work - and translating to the realm of lyric the work of the likes of Nawal El Saadawi. As Rumi said, "Love will find its way through all languages on its own"; in 'teaching my mother how to give birth', Warsan's debut pamphlet, we witness the unearthing of a poet who finds her way through all preconceptions to strike the heart directly. Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer who is based in London. Born in 1988, she is an artist and activist who uses her work to document narratives of journey and trauma. Warsan has read her work internationally, including recent readings in South Africa, Italy and Germany, and her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Peter Ebsworth is a poet in love with the stage. In Krapp's Last Tape, he treads the line between the audience and the performer, an act of voyeurism and ventriloquism that results in tense snippets of verse only relieved by a tongue in cheek humour that is evident throughout. In his persona poems, he embodies a pantheon of pop culture gods and goddesses such as Marlon Brando, Sticky Vicky, the veteran Benidorm erotic entertainer, and Tony Soprano; in other poems he turns the gaze around to observe them as audience. Selected from literary output ranging over 30 years the tone swings from bullish to reflective, aptly mirroring the gamut of emotions that performers embody on stage. Krapp's Last Tape remains, however, firmly rooted in side stage drama - Ebsworth's interest in Pythagoras is focused on his role as a soldier rather than mathematician, and his girl has a lobster tattoo in place of the dragon of myth.

"29 Ways to Drown", is the debut short story collection of Niki Aguirre, a stunningly talented Ecuadorean-American writer whose work has previously been published in three acclaimed anthologies. Influenced by a Latin American literary tradition steeped in magic realism, but embracing a personal history that has included living in Chicago, Cadiz, Guayaquil and London, Niki's fiction conveys a gritty, often scientifically-sophisticated, world with a haze of surrealism. Shamans parade the pages side-by-side with lovesick film buffs, papers and humans fly at will, and intellectual and professional quests lead to self-destruction.Whether it's a boy trapped at age fourteen after a botched attempt to capture time in a capsule, an organic seed distributor entrapping an errant lover with a replica pre-Columbian Aztec artefact bought in Chicago, or a woman attempting to drown herself in a water aerobics class in London, Niki Aguirre's stories grip by their absolute logic and the sheer absurdity of the inevitable truths they unravel.Latin America has always had its literary fiction heroes, but not many have come from Ecuador; based on the quality of Niki Aguirre's assured debut, it has been worth the wait.

Breathe is a collection that explores the heart of Fidel Castro-era Cuba; an outsider's look that is balanced by a weight of empathy to illuminate truths that lie couched between the island's propaganda and the Western media's portrayal. Characters from Europe and the USA in Swimming, Taxi and Sabbatical seem to want to hold on to the indulgences that their countries offer them, while praising Cubans for the more abstemious lives they lead and seeking to sample what the locals experience; in Siempre Luchando, I Never See Them Cry and The Party, romantic liaisons strengthen or buckle under the strain of the minute exploitations that result from the assumptions one makes about the other; the seedy sexual aggression of Luca's Trip to Havana is undercut by the subtle yet intense lust of Breathe; while Leaving Cuba, with its closing image of Havana's night sky, is as eloquently balanced a tale of the lives of everyday Cubans as you will read in a long while - whichever path one takes, something is lost.As Aida Bahr, winner of Cuba's Premio de la Critica Literaria says, "relying more on subtleties than on drama, [Segal] portrays the tensions and struggles, but also the joy and warmth, that fill Cubans' lives."

Call it love, lust or intimacy: behind every computer screen, behind every firewall is a heart, and in that heart sits the seed of something that needs nurturing. In Niki Aguirre's Terminal Romance that yearning manifests in 16 interlinked meta vignettes populated by incorrigible romantics, cyber stalkers, foot fetishists, love-struck professors and reality-impaired pessimists. Anchored by the story of Nina Parks, an ambitious writer and self-styled internet-dating guru, who has signed up to go on 365 dates to promote her new book The Ultimate Guide to Finding Love Online, these misfits collide to serve up haunting, hilarious dating dramas. Niki Aguirre's remarkable eye and unwavering prose imbue each character with compelling humanity, illustrating with poetic subtlety our innate need to reach out and connect at all costs.

A largely allegorical exploration of the loneliness of an existence based on an alien world-view, Martin Egblewogbe's The Waiting is a collection rooted in metropolitan Ghana, but its primary territory is the human mind. Juxtaposing his training as a physicist against his curiosity about local myth, he creates a universe that's both entertaining and erudite. In A Photograph of K & S, Smiling, a completely self-obsessed man, returned home after his father's death, attempts to explain away his unremarkable life based on one perceived slight from his youth; in The Gonjon Pin (title story for the 2014 Caine Prize anthology) a genius working on a program to predict lottery numbers is stumped by the appearance of an intruder's disembodied genitals on the wall of his computer engine room; The Making, Rain and Back to the Halls explore futility in different ways, while Atta explores life after death - a theme that reoccurs in a much bleaker guise in The Crwoling Caterpillar. Often Kafkaesque in its isolation of characters and a pervading sense of powerlessness, The Waiting nevertheless maintains a constant hum of humour, nowhere more so than in The Going Down of Pastor Mintumi - in which a pastor who has discovered the pleasures of the flesh late in life overindulges with hilarious consequences. The title story, The Waiting, is judgement day in a twisted mind, filled with the kinds of questions that haunt a life on earth, which, ultimately, is the quest of all art.

Agnes Meadows' reputation as an International performance poet has made her a firm favourite at festivals all over the world, including the Austin International Poetry Festival, Mediterranean Poetry Festival, and Palestinian PEN's International Poetry Festival. Woman is a selection of new poems fused with work from; her two previous books You and Me and Quantum Love; and her CDs Agnes Meadows and Blues Shakin' My Heels.

José Eduardo Agualusa is the kind of man who asks Siri if she believes in God and connects her second response (because why would you accept the first?) to a question he is asked about which Portuguese is his Portuguese. This capacity for weaving seemingly disparate threads into fascinating texts lies at the heart of Agualusa’s work as both journalist and novelist. In Paradise and Other Hells, we see both sides come together, humanised further by touches of the mundane: a father marvelling at the wonder of his daughter’s hair, the absolute logic of his son’s naïveté; an older man musing about ageing and funerals.Whether riffing on Jorge Luis Borges and his relationship with time, dissecting the political landscape of Angola, unpacking Fernando Pessoa’s casual racism, reflecting on the theory of dreams; or in awe at the beauty of Mozambique Island (where he lives), examining the influence of Africa and Brazil on contemporary Portuguese language, this is a book that reveals a mind constantly at work, a pen always at play with language, and it fizzes with Agualusa’s trademark humour and proboscis-sharp observation.Blending excerpts from his diary with columns published in the press, this is an intricate book that still allows for stop-start reading. In the short article, God is Sick, José Eduardo Agualusa asserts that ”people who are sure that their beliefs are based in good sense are open to discussion. They put forth arguments. They defend a certain line of thinking...” That is precisely what Paradise and Other Hells does, it opens a discussion of the world with the world, and that is the secret of its timelessness.Translated from Portuguese by a team of some of the finest contemporary translators — Rahul Bery (David Trueba’s Rolling Fields), Andrew McDougall, Robin Patterson (Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas), Francisco Vilhena (Adelaide Ivanova’s the hammer and other poems) and José Eduardo’s longtime translator, Daniel Hahn, OBE — and written with a convivial spirit, reading this book is akin to sitting next to a sparkling companion at a memorable dinner party, where the meal is secondary to warm, erudite conversation. Paradise and Other Hells is José Eduardo Agualusa as you’ve never read him before.

Truth Thomas' second collection 'Bottle of Life' is an oeuvre of multiple layers that straddles the immense cavern of human experience. Awash with startling imagery and word play, it chronicles childhood memories in Washington DC with as much verve as it explores the motivations for America's involvement in Afghanistan; it draws our eyes to accidents on the street and the common bend in our backs when we are fishing. And then there is music; Marvin Gaye, Celia Cruz and Michael Jackson break lines across the pages as families break bread in communion. At its core, 'Bottle of Life' is celebration of the sanctity and fragility of life and reaffirms Thomas' arrival as a major new voice in American poetry - a very necessary one.

A debut poetry publication.

The second in the ground-breaking mouthmark series, 13 Fairy Negro Tales is a vibrant pamphlet of contemporary poetry. In language scooped directly from a paintbrush, Inua Ellams announced his arrival on the poetry scene, with what has become a runaway bestseller. Written in language that has roots in Keats, hip hop rhymes and Shakespearean narrative, 13 Fairy Negro Tales has sold over 2000 copies since its release.

Winner of the Poetry Book Society (PBS) Pamphlet Choice for Summer/Autumn 2006, Jacob Sam-La Rose's debut chapbook displays the maturity of a poet who has honed his art through the time-honoured method of reading, writing, sharing, critiquing and rewriting. His poems exhibit a sense of awe and comfort at once, drawing the reader into a circle where even the familiar becomes new again. Critics have commented on his 'brave and often audacious willingness to experiment with form allows the reader to explore an impressive variety of subtle relationships'. What underlines Jacob's achievement is the fact that he achieves all this is a small volume of 17 poems and an ethereal 5-poem suite - his tribute to his childhood pastime - basketball. Jacob Sam-La Rose is a poet and educator of Guyanese parentage. A former Poet-in-Residence at BBC London, he is a touring writer with the British Council, with appearances at international venues including Kiasma - the Museum of Contemporary Art (Finland), Mylos Theatre (Greece) and the Center of Contemporary Art in Glasgow.Jacob has performed at a broad range of literature and arts festivals, including The URB festival (Helsinki), The Word: London Festival of Literature 2001 (the Underglobe, London), the Bay Lit festival (Cardiff), the Portobello Festival and the Bath Literature Festival.

"After Rain" (June 2008) is Charlotte Ansell's long-awaited follow up to the fantastic debut, "You Were For The Poem", which opened the world of Charlotte's direct, emotive poetry to new audiences. After the release of "You Were For The Poem", Charlotte featured at major festivals including Spit-Lit, Redbridge Literature Festival, Refugee Sanctuary Festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival and LIFT Festival, but she also managed to become mother of two delightful children while chronicling the world from the Dutch barge on which she lives. "After Rain" reveals Charlotte's raw, perceptive eye tempered by age and experience, embracing misfortune, but recognising the need to celebrate after rain.

'The mouthmark Book of Poetry' is an anthology of the individual-author titles published under the mouthmark poetry pamphlet series, comprising the work of Nick Makoha, Inua Ellams, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Jessica Horn, Truth Thomas, Denise Saul, Malika Booker, Janett Plummer and Warsan Shire. The series was conceived by flipped eye publishing's senior editor, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, as a means to get poets from non-mainstream backgrounds - including performance - into print. It was revolutionary for two reasons; first, it was a pamphlet series developed with a specific aim (later, tall-lighthouse would launch its pilot series, and, much later, Faber would launch its New Poets Initiative); second, it was a finite series - to end after ten pamphlets. After some success with the first two pamphlets in the series, Nick Makoha's 'The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man' (2005) and Inua Ellams' '13 Fairy Negro Tales' (2005), the Arts Council of England provided funding for the next four. It took six years for the series to be completed, but its impact far exceeded expectations.Authors such as Inua Ellams, Jacob Sam-La Rose (later editor of the last pamphlet in the series), Nick Makoha and Warsan Shire, have risen to international prominence; three of the pamphlets were cited by the Poetry Book Society pamphlet selectors for their quality; five of the poets have since been chosen for the ground-breaking national Complete Works development programme for UK poets of minority ethnic backgrounds; and Truth Thomas's from his pamphlet 'Party of Black' (2006) was chosen for Nikki Giovanni's 'The 100 Best African American Poems' (Sourcebooks, 2010). Crucially, the series retailed admirably as well, with over 10,000 copies sold at events - and through conventional retail channels. Now, with the release of 'The mouthmark Book of Poetry', readers can experience all nine individual poets published under the mouthmark poetry pamphlet series in this collectible volume that retains hallmarks of the iconic series, such as the distinctive brown paper-look cover with bold black designs.

Malika Booker is a writer, spoken word and multidisciplinary artist, whose work spans literature, education and cross-arts. She has appeared world-wide both independently and with the British Council. Founder of the international writer development collective, Malika's Kitchen, Malika was Hampton Court Palace writer in residence in 2004 and Poet in Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2011. Breadfruit, her first pamphlet, was commended by the PBS Selectors in 2007.

Two-time winner of the Christina Sergeyevna Award at the Austin International Poetry Festival, Agnes Meadows returns with her fifth collection of poetry, "This One Is For You", dedicated to the late Brinsley Sheridan, her long-time friend and fellow poet. The new work covers Agnes' usual themes of history, memory, everyday beauty and struggle, but it also explores the nature of friendship and the ingredients of endurance, joy and survival. After the huge success of her last two books, "Woman" and "At Damascus Gate on Good Friday", this new collection is a must-read for fans of Agnes Meadows - and for those who've never heard of her, "This One Is For You". Agnes Meadows' 'This One Is For You' is an intense and wondrous journey into the imagination. Her poetry is warm, rich and evocative of all the places we might travel. Each poem is like a personal dedication to the reader given in a spirit of generosity and celebration. It's a book full of secret delights, hidden sadness, and true friendship - Aoife Mannix A rich and intense journey. Here [in 'This One Is For You] we find themes of remembrance and history and the beauty hidden beneath the everyday and ordinary.Agnes Meadows is a rebel and a powerhouse of a writer - Camden New Journal Author of four previous books of poetry, Agnes Meadows has been gypsying around the world since she was 15 and her writing reflects the broad range of perspectives that her peripatetic lifestyle has taught her. She has been a featured poet with the Austin International Poetry Festival several times - giving performances and workshops all over Texas, including readings in Spanish, drawing on the 3 years she lived in Mexico - and now serves on the board of the festival. Agnes has also performed and led poetry workshops and residencies in Turkey, Spain, Israel and Palestine. She held residencies in all of the Universities on the West Bank, and spent several months in the Gaza Strip working with students from all three of Gaza's main Universities and the British Council. Away from academia, Agnes has run workshops on writing and performing poetry in the corporate sector, and has a wealth of experience of arranging and stage managing performances and shows across London. In addition to her own work, Agnes has also been an adviser on Poetry for Channel 4 TV (UK).Her previous publications are You and Me, Quantum Love, Woman (waterways, 2003), At Damascus Gate on Good Friday (waterways, 2005). Agnes has also produced two CDs of her poetry with music - Agnes Meadows and Blues Shakin' My Heels. She lives in London.

"Suckle", Roger Robinson's much-anticipated follow up to "Suitcase", proves once and for all that Roger's unique territory is memory and its capital is Trinidad - somewhere within its borders are the answers to everything, if you just look hard enough. His approach, self-deprecating yet erudite, creates intoxicating poetry flavoured with the attitude and lingo of his Trinidadian homeland. Delving into the past with much more confidence than in his debut, "Suckle" is alive with the terror and beauty of youth, and memorable for the recurring dance crew Emperors: '...I was its only non breaking member./ I did the practical things, the support:/ Someone had to carry the linoleum./ Someone had to adjust the equaliser'. Simple things, profound truths.

In 'Catching the Cascade', his long awaited debut collection, Paul Lyalls presents verse that documents his long career as a performing poet, exploring the motifs of childhood, love, consumerism, second hand cars and his native North. His punchy, breathlessly entertaining poetry stems not just from a razor sharp wit but from his genuine love of language. "A gifted poet...his work is witty, well constructed and well delivered." --The Stage "A talented poet, Lyalls' works, such as 'The Cult of Relationships' and 'Anatomy of a Bookshop' provide a clever take on modern attitudes and popular culture." --Three Weeks magazine "The quality that shines through this slim volume is a playful sense of fun...Lyalls has an unerring and endearing sense of fun." --Patrick Neate, London Magazine

Bold and experimental both in style and content, the poems of 'tunth-sk' have a life of their own - the images feel like they've been glimpsed through a gap in a fence line, the language like an eavesdropped conversation. In turns, funny, erotic, shocking and innocent, 'tunth-sk' establishes Emma Hammond as a distinct voice within the poetical landscape, unafraid of exploration, in turns playful and provocative.

A man claims ambush and assault by women's underwear, Houdini's diametrically opposed counterpart waits taped and shackled for her man to save her, and girly-weak is not an option. Described as a poet of the world, Jacqueline Saphra's work dances between the personal and the profound to offer a striking vision of growing up and growing older, mothers and motherhood, femininity and gender relations, all framed against the backdrop of a modern world, itself subject to growing pains. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions is her debut full collection.

Candy-Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars is a document of transformations: the possibilities that walk the fine line between the real and the surreal, the mundane and the extraordinary. Contemporary culture clashes with mythology as Bruce Lee angles for space alongside Prometheus on pages where twin towers burn and yellow hues bleed into London sunsets. Yet is is also a text of conversations: the commerce of possibilities, the transformations that memory can inflict on the present, the clear light that today can cast on yesterdays. And through it all there is music - both references to music and musicians and a music of language that Inua Ellams seems to be exploring, testing, riffing on.