Art Squares – serie

The Goldfish is a sumptuous, surreal exploration of femininity. The poet inhabits the voice of a goldfish through a series of linguistically experimental poems which plunge us into the glass bowl and invite us to gaze out. The poems are in turn sensual, spiky, and queasy, as the poet satirizes the patriarchy and issues a rallying cry for women broken down by society. Halfway through the book, the scope opens out to the world beyond the goldfish bowl, via the story of a free spirit passing through customs, a paean "to our white husbands", and a letter which heals old wounds.

Menagerie is a collection of poems about animals, divided into three sections: water, earth and air. Some poems examine a creature from close-up, almost allowing the reader to see the world through the animal's eyes, while the poet is more present in other poems, looking on. The collection invites the reader to reflect on loneliness, love, mortality, and hope. Each poem is typeset with plenty of space around it, allowing it to breathe. With stylised illustrations by Amy Evans.from "Octopus Tank, Torbay Aquarium"I saw a ribbon of starlings once – they rose and fell in that same way, tied and re-tied Rome in a bow, and I thought the knot at their centre must be God. Here is God again in this stranger, the colour coursing her billow and flop like a weather map crawling with storms.

This is a picture book for everyone, framed as a bedtime story (and love letter) to the author's son. It follows the events of the little boy's birth, and his mother's struggle with her new role. In stunningly raw writing that cuts straight to the heart, Eihmane tells a story about love and where love comes from.The book is beautifully illustrated by the author, in dark blues and reds, with expressive, blotchy artwork. The book is tactile, printed in risograph and stapled for a welcoming, open feel.EXTRACTI realized my heart was very small. The size of a pea maybe. There was very little love inside, struggling to get out. I said No to the rest. I didn’t like saying No at that time. Maybe it was my first and only No for a long time.Then my heart started to grow with you. I made it grow so you get all the love you deserve. Now I watch my heart, I check with it each morning and each night so it doesn’t stop growing with you.

In her debut pamphlet, Lisabelle Tay leads the reader down through the underworlds of illness, motherhood and family histories. Lighting the way with her luminescent poems, the poet draws on Celtic, Classical and Chinese mythologies, appealing to the selkie, Eurydice, and Chang'e in turn as she seeks a path through the darkness – and back to the light.Pilgrim depicts a journey and a return, moving from the expansive and mythological to the inward and personal. The pilgrim who left is not the pilgrim who returns...

Rebecca Hurst's debut pamphlet is woven through with fairy tales, folklore and landscape. She uses the natural world, family mythology and the theory of fairy tales to unpack, embroider, and explode traditional tales and tropes, exploring themes of voice, concealment, and transformation. Prickling with magic and spells, the poems in The Fox's Wedding lead us down a twisty path to find – what? A prince made of needles? A cursed box? A golden key? Take care and keep your wits about you; if you're lucky you might just find your way home.***Describe the box.It is square, carved from elm with a brass hinge and lock.I see you hold it in your hands.I hold it against my body, so.It is a burden.It is the size of a tea-caddy.It is an object of beauty.You could call it beautiful. The grain, the glow.The box is very old.The box would prefer we not discuss its age.- from 'Her Unbreakable Box'