Anne Caldwell, "The Language of Now"

 

Anne Caldwell is a poet, editor and arts collaborator based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. She lectures in Creative Writing for the Open University. She has been described as one of "fifty-one world class prose poets" in the international anthology, Dreaming Awake: Prose Poetry from Australia, the USA and United Kingdom (Madhat Press, 2022). She has gained a national and international reputation for this genre. She has four previous collections of poetry, including Neither Here nor There (SurVision), which won a James Tait Prize. 2024. Anne’s work is featured in The Book of Bogs (Little Toller Press, 2025). She had an Arts Council Award in 2024 to write about peatlands in West Yorkshire and Finland with filmmaker Lewis Landini and Dance Artist Inari Hulkkonnen. Her website is here. 

About The Language of Now, by Anne Caldwell
The Language of Now is a prose poetry collection firmly rooted in a northern sense of place and eco-poetics, as well as an exploration of the turbulence of illness and climate change. Prose poetry is brilliant at holding contradictions and juxtapositions: qualities that are exploited in a search for an intimate relationship with the natural world. Caldwell explores childhood memories, the fragility of landscapes both rural and urban, and the impact of the pandemic, where our connection to each other was fragmented and stretched. The prose poems combine the real and the fairytale, memoir and myth, where humans transform into birds and language is lost and found. She sees poems as small acts of resistance. As the title poem suggests, "The language of now is short and full of gaps." Here is darkness, but also a sense of playfulness in the writing, as the poems interweave the down-to-earth cadences of prose and the musical intensity of poetry. 

You can read more about The Language of Now on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample prose poems from the book. 

From The Language of Now

Wasp’s Nest 

I wanted to be a goat when I was young. Agile and cloven-hooved. My days were spent poking cowpats with a stick, sending clouds of bluebottles into the hot sky as the hay meadows chirped with crickets and grasshoppers. One evening there was an empty wasp's nest in Nana Clarke’s attic. Paper whorls, like a handmade balloon. I went and sat with it, amongst trunks of musty linen and love letters, the regrets and hopes of her thrifty, wartime generation. I'd always thought of Nana as a good witch, full of herbal remedies and canny wisdom. Neighbours had her down as a complete and utter crackpot. What would she have made of Brexit, Long Covid, Climate Catastrophe? Would these words have been barbs in her throat, as she pursed her lips and searched for marshmallow and lemon verbena? Perhaps the wasps were still swarming out there, looking for a place to shelter. I listen for the thrumming of wings, the ragged edges of our lives. 

Widdop Gate, High Summer

Mowing weather and a blue tractor races across Shakleton, fields striped with drying grass. The moor is rectangles of heather burnt or shorn, year after year. I’m trying to forge a path through the bog, King Common Rough below me and the sparkle of Graining Water. It’s a hot day up on the tops. Meadow browns flit between sedge and rushes, bracken carpets the valley sides. The wind sings, no turbines, this land is egg-shell delicate.

Goldfinch break cover, crickets chirp, lambs bleat for mothers. I think of my boy gone to the Far East looking for adventure, seeking out the last scraps of Sumatran rainforest, searching for Orangutan before they’re all gone.

Here, the bog’s pleasures are quieter. If we healed its wounds, peat would soothe our over-heating earth like honey. Moss feathers boulders, bilberry nestles in crevices. I discover lichen circles blooming on stone — a map of the whole world in miniature.

Annabelle Slator, "Risky Business"

Annabelle Slator grew up writing stories in the depths of the British countryside. After achieving a degree in Creative Writing, she spent most of her twenties working with brands and start-ups in London and New York. Nowadays, if she isn’t spending time writing, you can almost always find her obsessing over niche internet drama, practising her fencing parry or mooching around vintage fairs and flea markets with her husband and two dachshunds, Gruffalo and Gryffin. The Launch Date is Annabelle’s debut novel, inspired by her time working in the wild world of dating apps. Risky Business is her second novel, inspired by her experiences working in the tech and start-up industry.

 

About Risky Business, by Annabelle Slator
Tech founder Jess Cole, desperate to keep her start-up afloat, is forced to pose as her brother’s assistant during a tech competition, hoping a male-led company will be taken more seriously, only to find her secret identity "Violet" compromised when she has a hot one-night stand with the head of the competition’s assistant.

You can read more about Risky Business on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a short excerpt from the novel. 

From Risky Business

"You made it." His low timbre coats the seething anxiety flowing through my veins.

I turn my chair on the swivel, laying my phone face down on the bar and cocking my head to the side, "Disappointed?"

Oliver stifles a smile, chin lowering to meet my eyeline. "Far from it, I was hoping you'd show." His fingers pinch the sides of a sweating glass.

I balance on an elbow, glancing at the drink. "So you can throw a beer on me and finish the job?"

"How about I just buy you one instead?" He gestures to the empty seat beside me, and I nod, rolling my eyes and crossing my legs. He doesn't hold himself with the same buzzing energy most in this room do, like they are desperate to impress their bosses and one another. He has a commanding presence, a mixture of laid-back and authoritative that I can't quite get a handle on.

He settles into the chair and leans his forearms onto the bar, his shoulder muscles tensing under the crisp white shirt. I feel a quiet thrill in his company, like an echo of adrenaline.

His chin shifts to me, the tea lights in red jars on the bar casting his cheekbones in a devilish glow. "What made you decide to come?"

I shrug, glancing awkwardly from him to the shelf of bottles with brightly coloured Italian labels. "I was having a mental breakdown in the area so thought it would be rude not to."

He huffs a laugh, hazel eyes twinkling. "Bad day?" The words roll off his tongue so smoothly that I imagine he was a cigarette-lighting bartender in another life.

I contemplate lying, but something about him is making me want to tell him the truth, to drop the pretences. I lean my elbow on the bar, resting my chin in my palm. "Bad year."

He whistles, almost impressed. "We better make it a double then." He gestures to the bartender with two fingers.

I shake my head, the background noise returning to the room with a pop as I come out of the minor trance. "You don't need to buy me a drink."

He shoots me a fake-appalled look. "Listen, I'm just trying my best to charm you over from the actively disliking me camp to a more neutral zone. I owe you at least one." He holds up a shiny black credit card. "Besides, this is my boss's card." He hits me with another winning smile.

"Oh, well, in that case, I'll have a Negroni." I sit back, relaxing into the chair. "How come your boss lets you run amok with his credit card?"

He taps the short edge of the plastic on the wooden bar. "Because I'm the only one who knows how to get his coffee order right, and knowledge is power."

"The keys to the caffeinated castle," I add with a nod.

He points at me with the shiny card. "Exactly."

"If only you could deliver them in one piece," I add, brow arched.

"Well, then I'd be running the whole company, and nobody wants that."

Jennifer Maritza McCauley, "Neon Steel"

 

Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of the cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF (Stalking Horse Press), the short story collections When Trying to Return Home (Counterpoint), and Recognition (U. Wisconsin Press, forthcoming 2027), the poetry collections Kinds of Grace (Flower Song), VERSUS (Texas Review Press, 2027) and Tumbao (Texas Review Press, 2029) and the speculative collection Neon Steel (Cornerstone, Feb 2026). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio and CantoMundo and her work has been a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Best Fiction Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a Must-Read by Elle, Latinx in Publishing, Ms. Magazine and Bookshop. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her website is here. 

About Neon Steel, by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
Set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Neon Steel is acclaimed writer Jennifer Maritza McCauley's love letter to millennial nerd culture. Anime fans, vampires, indie rappers, robots, comic book fans, and thrill seekers find their way through the Steel City's neighborhoods and haunts. A young girl discovers an underground world of Afro Otaku who change the way she sees the city; a high school student discovers a kindred spirit in a Bomba girl; The Terminator (1984) is reimagined as a josei story featuring a purple loc'd robot; and a secret coven of vampires who hide out in Pittsburgh steel mills risk being discovered after they lose one of their own. Magical realist and neon-lit, Neon Steel faithfully follows a group of nerds and the magic that excites them, bringing to life a city and a state of being.

Below, you can read a sample story from the collection, originally published in Latin@Literatures here. 

From Neon Steel

The Girl in Bomba Dress 

Adrienne was late, per usual. She hated being late, but here she was, late for Algebra II and she wasn’t going to embarrass herself in front of all of those white kids by being late. What would they say? Dumb girl from Sharpsburg, of course she’s nothing. Or their eyes would do all the gibbering. Pin-points and spitfire that’s what they’d give her. Who cared? Either way.

She ran from her place on Chapman Street, fast, faster than she normally ran, her backpack slamming up and down on her little back and causing her red pain. As she was running, past trash-thick cans and darkened bars and coffee shops bright and yanking folks in for heavy caffeine, she was thinking about how all she needed to do was get to the bus stop and make it to homeroom and she’d be fine. She could be quiet, nobody would notice her if she blended in and said nothing. She just had to get there. They all knew her, after all she was the only Black girl in the school outside of Tiana, and they knew Adri as the one who Always Did School Right. But here she was late. Per usual.

Halfway through Adri’s sprint down the high stacked rust-red buildings she heard a grunt. It was a woman’s grunt but it was stark enough that Adri stopped in her tracks, thinking someone was hurt. She turned around and approached the alley behind her, black and garbage-filled, the cans drooping with shit and pizza.

She walked past the alleyway and toward an opening behind her, flanked by grafitti’d brick of Black people, hollering and wearing purple, looking royal. In the center of the open space there was a young woman, a little older, but not much more than Adri’s sixteen years. She had long hair in fluffing curls. She wore an ivory dress crimping and flying as she danced. Her eyes were closed. She was meditating, meditating, her muscles tensing, tensing. She sang Bambula, Bambula. Adri stared at this girl, not knowing exactly what to say, and while she was trying to gauge how fast she should run to class, the girl’s eyes snapped open and she saw Adri.

"Who are you?" she said.

"What?" Adri whispered. She could tell this bomba girl was beautiful, her body bronzed and blazing. The bomba girl could be a terrifying stranger but Adri felt soft around this girl. What was she doing in an alley in the middle of Pittsburgh of all places?

"Where are you going?" the bomba girl asked gently, her voice deeper than whatever young age she was.

"To school," Adri gulped. "Aren’t you in school?"

"No," she said. “I work in the night. I practice bomba in the day, preparing myself."

"For what?"

She turned back to her swishing work and spread her hands out, she shook them. The bangles on her wrists clanged and clacked.

"You do this without drums?" Adrienne asked. Her family in Puerto Rico would bomba sometimes, she knew you couldn’t flail and shake without a good beat.

She pressed her hand against her chest. "It’s in here."

"I don’t believe that."

"That’s very American. To be so cynical."

Adrienne shrugged. "Girl, I’m a junior. I’m just trying to get into college."

She smiled, a half-grin and went back to the quick work of moving her hands about.

"Okay," she said, in that unnervingly dark voice and Adrienne didn’t know what to do with her. "That’s your path."

"This is a sacred art," Adrienne opined. "Why do you do it?"

"Girl," she mimicked Adrienne and swept her hands out. "Aren’t you a sacred art?" Adrienne’s face said "WTF," and it was true. Adrienne didn’t value herself at all. She was just a high school girl from Sharpsburg with nothing to her name but a bunch of slurs hurled at her face and here was this gorgeous girl talking about how she was something beautiful.

"I guess I am."

"Say it with your chest, mami."

"I want to do what you do, freely," she said. Then she said it with her chest, another cliché: "Puedo hacer cualquier cosa …"

"O le ṣe," she tried, in a language Adri didn’t know and as she spun around Adrienne saw her own face in her spinning. "There you go," she said gently. She stopped dancing and came over and tugged at the belt around her waist. "Me quiero tal como soy …"

She reached out and clutched her hands. Adrienne remembered she had homeroom but as she gripped her heated fingers back she suddenly didn’t care. They could say what they wanted. She stretched her back and Adri stretched hers. They were dancing, dancing, dancing African-Boricua music, taking them to palm tree’d places they’d never been, in Pittsburgh’s aching center, not worried about the time.

All about the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester

This blog has recently passed 700,000 readers! Thanks to everyone - students, graduates, authors, editors, readers - concerned. Over the last few years, we've published over 640 articles by over 450 authors. 

The blog was originally set up in conjunction with our acclaimed MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. So it seems like a good occasion to bring together some of the articles about the MA here (below). 

The MA in Creative Writing is now open for applications to start in Autumn 2026. The course is available full-time (12 months) or part-time (24 months). You can find basic information and the online application form here. If you'd like to discuss the MA further, you can email the course director Jonathan Taylor on jt265@le.ac.uk and he can send you lots of detailed information about it. The MA is open to students from diverse academic and writerly backgrounds: you don't necessarily have to have a first degree. All applications are judged individually, on their own writerly merits. Do get in touch if you have any queries!

Here are some articles on the blog about aspects of the MA in Creative Writing at Leicester:

What Is an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester?

Ten Things Worth Knowing about the MA in Creative Writing at Leicester

The MA in Creative Writing: Some Advice from Past Students

An MA in Creative Writing: Is It for You?, By Kathy Hoyle

Why Do a Creative Writing MA?, By Kit de Waal 

Doing a Part-Time MA in Creative Writing, By Karen Rust

I'm a Master's Graduate!, By Jessica Bacon

Zoe Brooks, "Something in Nothing"

 

After many years working with disadvantaged communities in London and Oxford, Zoe Brooks returned to her native Gloucestershire and her first love of writing and performing poetry. Zoe’s long poem for multiple voices Fool’s Paradise won the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition award for best poetry ebook 2013. Her first collection was Owl Unbound (Indigo Dreams Publishing 2020), and Fool’s Paradise (Black Eyes Publishing) was published as a print book in 2022. Something in Nothing was published by Indigo Dreams in Feb 2026. Zoe is director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival’s Online Programme and assists with the annual In-Cheltenham Festival. She set up and runs the Poetry Events in UK & Ireland Facebook group.

About Something in Nothing, by Zoe Brooks
Something in Nothing is a verse novel, which weaves together the lives of various fairytale characters in a contemporary setting to explore universal issues, in particular the denial of evil – the "something in nothing" of the collection’s title. 

At the heart of the sequence is the story of Bluebeard and the Luminous Girl. Both are based on real individuals. 

Whether it is state terror or the individual evil of a misogynist serial killer, most of us are in denial. It couldn’t happen to us. The man we pass on the street cannot be a murderer. Worse still, we see the danger in the wrong places, fearing those who are different (the stranger), rather than people who are like us.

And if we do see it, how can we speak of it? In order to speak of the unspeakable, this sequence uses fairytale characters:

• Bluebeard is a serial killer of young women, whom he buries in his cellar. 
• The Luminous Girl is a collector of angels and lover of life. A traditional fairytale heroine maybe, but also a modern one.
• The Woman at Number 5 - effectively a fairy godmother to the Luminous Girl without the magic. As a refugee from a totalitarian regime, she recognises the evil that is lurking in plain sight.  
• Baba Yaga - the ubiquitous witch of Slavic folktales with an insatiable appetite for human flesh, which she cooks in an oven from which smoke always rises. A former goddess of death, Baba Yaga is a mass murderer.
• Bluebeard’s wife. True to the original folktale, she is an innocent young woman and likely victim. 
• Beast, another outsider, an elderly monster who is not a monster, Beast is married to Beauty. Beast sees through Bluebeard’s jack-the-lad persona.
• Beauty - Beast’s wife, who unlike the fairytale character is past her prime. She grieves for the child she could not have.
• The young man – an angel out of place and useless in this world of fairytale monsters and characters. He cannot save or even warn the Luminous Girl.  

By using fairy tales, the poems allow us a safe place to peer into the darkness. The poems are elemental and yet personal, out of time and yet terribly current. We are not part of Bluebeard’s and Baba Yaga’s world, but we could be. 

Zoe blogs about her poetry and fairy tales on her website here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From Something in Nothing

Happy Ever After - A Catechism

What do fairytales teach us? 

That the most dangerous animal is the huntsman. 
That you should never trust strangers.
That you should never trust stepmothers,
(or fathers, or sisters, or grandmothers).

When midnight strikes hurry home.
When a shoe does not fit cut off your toe.
When you cross a bridge do so quickly. 

Don’t rely on breadcrumbs.
Don’t go into the forest.
Don’t eat gingerbread or apples. 

That monsters can be princes in disguise.
That monsters can be monsters. 
That men can be monsters. 
That some men keep their dead wives in the cellar. 

That stories tell the truth.

Apart from at the end. 

 
Bluebeard Likes to Entertain 

Bluebeard likes to entertain
waifs and strays like puppies 
that need drowning.
The sort of women 
that no one will miss –
looking for a sofa or a home
or a man who will listen.

 
Bluebeard charms them
with his culinary skills,
his smile like a trapdoor.

No one notices them in café or street.
They are storm water in the gutter.
Easy come, easy gone, these girls.

But Bluebeard notices.

Karuna Mistry, "You-me-verse-all Hueman"

Karuna Mistry is a British writer of Indian ethnicity and works at the University of Leicester. He has published over 100 individual poems in more than 70 anthologies. Between his two poetry book releases, Karuna has been a poetry editor for an online magazine. As well as poetry, his creativity includes blogging and drawing – his illustrations appear in both of his books. You can connect with Karuna via his website or Facebook / Instagram: @karunamistrypoetry. You can read about his previous book, Sojourn, written with Pratibha Savani, on Creative at Leicester here. 

About You-me-verse-all Hueman, by Karuna Mistry
You-me-verse-all Hueman captures humanity in its plurality – age, gender, race, sexuality, sociality and spirituality. Follow humanity’s pursuit of happiness through past, present and future in this epic journey. A variety of themes and recurring subtleties build through the chapters, culminating in a sublime climax. The book contains 120 poems across time and space, 40 digital images, 30 illustrations, as well as 4 essays. You can read more about the book here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From You-me-verse-all Hueman

"The Armour of Fiction Versus the Sword of Reality": My Creative Writing Dissertation

By Kimaya Tushar Patil

Hi! I'm Kimaya, I'm 22, and I've recently been awarded my MA in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. I'm originally from the city of Pune, in India, and I graduated from Fergusson College with a BA in English Literature in 2024 (2:1).

My final dissertation for the MA was a prose-based Creative Writing project which highlighted the political turmoil we face in a society that manipulates information to control and divide its citizens, and how we, as recently inducted adults, learn to navigate this chaos on finding ourselves in such an uncertain environment. For my dissertation, I submitted the first six chapters of the first book of what I have planned to be a trilogy.

My undergraduate project had to be done in a group and was purely research based (we applied Allen Tate's "Theory of Tension" to Dante's Inferno), so I was glad to have free rein this time around, as my Master's dissertation allowed me to combine research with my original work. 

The themes of my work were inspired by the current world events unfolding in the previous and ongoing decade. We have been through so much as a society; battling precarious geo-political conflicts, global pandemics, and corrupt leaderships. And yet, in spite of all the chaos, we are trying to not only persevere, but to find ourselves as we enter a new stage of life. My submission focused on the themes of 1) individual morality vs. social indoctrination, 2) identity and belonging, and 3) the construction of a false reality through propaganda and class division. 

As for the genre, while never having worked with fantasy before, it was the only one that felt right to be able to bear the weight of the themes being explored. It gave me the chance to probe further into these issues. My book would be classified in terms of the newly popular "New Adult" category, in the genre of political-fantasy with a romantasy sub-plot. The "New Adult" category is fairly recent development, and usually falls between the "Young Adult" and "Adult" categories, aiming for audiences between 18-25 years of age. 

The first book follows 22-year-old Oriana Seravelle, as she navigates her life as a new adult. As the adoptive daughter of the decorated army General of Elydris, Oriana has big shoes to fill. Between training and honing her ability to wield shadows, and her ageing father retiring soon, she is trying her best to be worthy of his legacy. Just when her father agrees to let her take on some more serious responsibilities, she comes across a mysterious stranger who threatens to turn her world upside down. 

During my dissertation I found myself struggling with scene edits, as well as stylistic edits. With scenes, I often struggled to maintain the delicate balance between mystery and revelation. I also often spent too much time focusing on minute details of particular scenes. I have learned, though, that it is best to know just enough about a scene to make sure it can be converted into a rough draft. That way there is at least something to edit later. 

Here are a few general tips for writing at university I feel I've picked up along the way:

• Write whatever you can. It doesn't matter if it is 50 words or 500. It does not necessarily have to be a perfect draft.
• Perfect drafts are a MYTH. And imposter syndrome is real, although it is good to remind yourself that you have your own unique timeline to accomplish your goals!
• Go through your curriculum well before your classes begin and email your tutors in case of any queries. (They are always happy to help you!)
• While navigating the busy schedule of a post-graduate degree, organisation is key! (Don't be shy to use that note-taking app, and the scheduling calendar. They are lifesavers).

Below, you can read a short excerpt from my MA Creative Writing Dissertation.

 

From Chapter Two

The moon is high by the time I make my way across the town and to the outskirts near the cliffs. The Fortress is a daunting structure in the distance. Its security is second best, only to its geographical advantage, which makes it inescapable, by foot or by water. Hewn from stone, the structure is deeper than it is taller, overlooking the steep drop to the jagged shoreline and deep waters below. 

Shadows dance along the walls as I climb the steps to the entrance. The two stationed guards exchange skeptical looks, but let me pass after handing me the roster of the cells. The darkness seems to close in the deeper I go, the dampness of mildew coating my senses in an invisible cloak. The sound of my boots is the loud compared to the occasional groan or yell coming from a distance. It takes my eyes a minute to adjust to the light that flickers from the carved hollow quartz stones, placed upon unevenly distanced sconces. I make sure to double-check every name and locking mechanism on each of the holding cells as I move deeper into the fortress. 

About forty cells in, the Fortress goes quiet; too quiet. I move cautiously, drawing a blade from its sheath, and take a left at the upcoming junction. I see something move in the shadows out of the corner of my eye. I turn around to find hollow darkness, but I sense someone standing in the shadows. There is more than one person here. Not guards.