Cathi Rae, "Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet"

Congratulations to UoL MA and PhD graduate, Cathi Rae, whose new poetry collection has been just been published!

Cathi Rae is a poet, spoken word artist, teacher of creative writing and anti-ageist activist. She has performed throughout the UK and has been described as a "spoken word icon" by Joelle Taylor. Cathi has an MA in Creative Writing and a practice led / creative PhD - both awarded at the University of Leicester.

About Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet, by Cathi Rae
Nick Everett writes: "This collection explores the painful but important subject of male suicide in a series of eloquent and sensitive poems, each informed by a true story. Drawing only on information publicly available on social media, these are poems of respectful distance as well as of imaginative sympathy; and they bear moving testimony not only to the distinctive of each commemorated individual but also to the tragically powerful social forces that lead men to suffer in silence rather than share their feelings."  

20% of all sales revenue will be donated to @andysmanclub - a UK based grassroots charity supporting men's mental health. You can read more about Cathi's work on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet

Tiger Feet

There’s a photo of you   a snapshot    snap-shot

in a kitchen full of the clutter of life with children

a jumble of laundry 

leaning into the door of the washing machine

an endless cycle of

clean and worn and dirty

and is this how you came to feel

worn out    and    dirty

but       there’s this picture

taken for no special reason

except that someone said    smile

and so you did

can of beer 

comfortable in your fist     familiar

I can tell

and you should be wearing Riggers     

or Docks   or even battered baseball boots

smeared with plaster stains and paint

work wear     work-worn    

instead     you’re wearing tiger slippers

you’re wearing tiger feet 

daily everyday wear

seen better days

your suicide almost unnoticed

no social media Greek chorus grief

seven people noticed that you were gone

worn out    and dirty

endless cycle     ceased

and I wonder 

what happened to your tiger feet.

Club 18 to 35

Planning a road trip with a mate    so off his head on pills 

he’s already seeing double before you’ve even left the car park

tyres with tread so thin that only belief 

keeps traction on the road

and a brake light that flickers

On

Off

On 

Off

don’t think about it

pump up the volume

bang out a rhythm on your steering wheel

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

or on an off-the-books 

and under the radar building site

you stand on scaffolding

railing at the skies

sans hard hat of course

because you’re hard enough

“Come on God - do you want some?”

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

  

be a squaddie

in an army    any army

in a desert    far from home

where the red dust road goes on forever

dropped into a landscape you can’t read 

not fluent in foreign

scarcely fluent in your mother tongue 

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

be a superhero 

on a media friendly tower

acrid smell of sweat and fear

homemade banner     Rights for absent fathers

the S scrunched up too small

looked so much easier when you planned it on the web

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

 

blamed for every act of violence

held responsible    even when you weren’t

finally formulated this efficient use 

of guns and ropes and pills

rubber tubing snaking from exhausts to driver’s seat

this tidying up of all loose ends

 

finally in touch with your feelings

too late

 

when a room’s on fire 

sometimes a leap into nothing

feels the safest thing.

Andrew Button, "Shatner in Space: Beyond the Cosmic Pizza"

 

Born in Nottingham in 1965, Andrew Button grew up there before leaving for university and currently lives in Leicestershire. He works as a librarian for Warwickshire County Council. Andrew has had many poems placed in magazines and anthologies and a pamphlet, Dry Days in Wet Towns, was published in 2016. To date, he has had three collections published by erbacce press: The Melted Cheese on the Cosmic Pizza (2017), Music for Empty Car Parks (2019) and Shatner in Space: Beyond the Cosmic Pizza (2023).

As a performing poet, he has headlined and performed at various open mics and in libraries (and online) mainly across the Midlands, including Coventry’s Fire & Dust, Coventry Central Library, Nottingham’s Crossed Words, Derby’s Wordwise, Chesterfield’s Spire Writes, Leicester’s now-defunct Shindig, Birmingham’s Poetry Bites, Lichfield’s Poetry Alight, Leamington’s Script Stuff and PureGoodandRight and several Warwickshire libraries, to name but a few. In April 2025, he started his own open mic, Can of Words, in Coalville.

Andrew's poetic influences range from Ian MacMillan, Simon Armitage, Phillip Larkin, Lavinia Greenlaw, Roger McGough to Ray Bradbury, the lyrics of 10cc and Mary Chapin Carpenter, music in general and Yorkshire tea (lots of it)! His poetry is observational, anecdotal and ironic. He likens himself to a poetic eavesdropper and is a keen observer of eccentric and obsessive behaviour. 

About Shatner in Space: Beyond the Cosmic Pizza, by Andrew Button
Many of the poems in Andrew’s latest collection were written in Lockdown and shortly afterwards. As a result, there are a raft of poems that reflect the state of physical and mental confinement that we faced, but at the same time, they are looking for the light of better times. This is juxtaposed with poems about space (including the title piece), the irony of which was never more evident than during the COVID crisis. 

At other moments, the book is interspersed with quirky poetical observations on everything from pensioners riding in pelotons, the President of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society, to toilet paper engineers and the eccentric habits of the Swiss on Sundays.

Above all, this collection reveals Andrew’s certifiable optimism and roving poetic eye that takes in a smorgasbord of subjects and themes.

You can read more about Shatner in Space: Beyond the Cosmic Pizza on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Shatner in Space: Beyond the Cosmic Pizza

Space

Floating in our tiny orbits,
satellites of the sofa,
the world has shrunk.
If it wasn’t for the gravity
of the situation,
we’d be free to roam,
untethered, beyond these rooms.

Housebound, the supermarket mission
is one small step of any kind
and our ground control
is Marcus Rashford and Sir Captain Tom.

Distance from loved ones
feels like galaxies
as parts of families
have become detached
from their docking stations.

Like astronauts
and the Kinks
on Waterloo Sunset,
every day, we look at the world
from our windows,
real and televisual
and fasten ourselves in
to the sentiments of Mr Blue Sky.

Keep telling ourselves,
as Tim Peake must have done
when falling to earth,
re-entry won’t be long.

Static in the Wires

We surge through the years
from babbling babies
to vibrant young adults.
From confident thirty somethings
to anchored middle age
and venerable seniority.
Industrious as ants,
we accumulate memories
and experiences
storing them on the grid
of our minds
ready to be discharged
when required. 
If we’re lucky,
in life we’ll rub off
on our children, relatives
and friends
and in death,
remain an invisible force
of energy
like static in the wires.

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. 

Five Years of Publishing Beyond the Mainstream: On Setting Up and Running Renard Press

By Will Dady

An unknown wit of years past asks, "How do you make a small fortune in publishing?" Of course the answer is, "Start with a large one!" 

I’m afraid I have to report that when we set up Renard Press we didn’t have a large fortune, just bags of passion, and somehow that, and stubbornness – and the book community’s kind support – has helped us make it to our first big milestone: five years of making books. We’ve not yet amassed that small fortune – but our bookshelves have grown rich indeed with tales from all corners of the globe. 

Setting up an indie press in April 2020 felt for a while like one of those acts which, viewed one way is a stroke of genius, viewed another is utter madness. In case you missed it, there was a pandemic on, and we were all confined to barracks – but as our first print rep said, "If you can get through this, you can get through anything." 

Despite the isolated nature of those months – years – of Covid, which I’m sure we’re all only too keen to try to forget, it was in some ways a good time to be stepping out in a new and positive light. Somehow we chanced on authors who trusted us with their words before we had a track record; and then readers, who were happy to pay good money for these little paper miracles. 

Over these five years there have of course been some hurdles, speedbumps, calamities – it’s famously difficult to keep a small press running and to achieve some sort of publicity cut-through without the huge budget that the Big Five enjoy, and let’s not even get into the disaster Brexit has wrought on exports and politics, and the turmoil of social media under new ownership. But there have also been such positives – a thriving bookish community, recognition through awards, lasting relationships with book lovers. 

At the end of last year we celebrated our fifth birthday with a wonderful, warm event in St Mary’s Islington, in a by turns hilarious and moving series of author readings, raising the rafters with lines from those first five years of publishing. 

The stats surrounding these years are quite startling. In total in our first half-decade we have published 165 books across our imprints, including 650 (living) writers, published in both single-author books and a shelf-full of anthologies, including many debut authors, and we’ve also planted some 2,500 trees. (Perhaps the last of these sticks out a bit here, but humour us – sustainability is a huge part of what we do).

Of course any press could – and will, in the age of AI – publish 165 crap books, regurgitating stolen words endlessly for the amusement and profit of the smug billionaires whose platforms promote such rot to the detriment of literature and the environment. But I’d like to think that Renard’s books are literary gems, soulful and unique, and each books sits proudly on the shelves in my office, as well as in countless bookshops and homes. There are points when a publisher stands at a crossroads, I think – most will counsel to follow the money; but a big part of what makes us different, in my eyes, is that we’re looking for different, and this means looking beyond the mass of published voices – for stories and writers who have fallen through the cracks, who aren’t flavour of the month, who aren’t seen in the mainstream. And when I talk to our subscribers, who receive a book every month, they talk about the joy of reading books they would never have found otherwise – and this is what keeps me going. "Variety is the soul of pleasure," said groundbreaking seventeenth-century writer and sometimes spy Aphra Behn – words to live by!

So it’s important to us that the list remains a broad church – from the outset we committed to gender equality in our commissioning, opting to avoid becoming another stale, male-dominated list, and I’m proud to see great and natural diversity in the shelves, be that religion, class, sexuality or cultural or ethnic context. Reading is, after all, one of the best ways to explore, to meet people and places we might otherwise not; so, like any diet, it should be varied. 

We celebrated our first five years with that Islington evening event, with crates of beer and a whole lot of authors – but we marked the occasion too with a thoughtful meditation in our Renard Press: Five Years anthology. This is a very special, limited edition of excerpts, which I hope will enchant readers, but also be lovingly preserved on bookshelves of book lovers. It is not designed to sit on a bookshop’s till point – or, indeed, in a nameless distribution city by the M1, ready for the space-going tech bro to peddle for peanuts. Even better, proceeds go to the phenomenal Bookbanks charity, who, by bringing books to foodbanks, are doing the really important work that the National Year of Reading aims for: breaking down barriers of privilege. Our partnerships with charities have been key to our work, and we strongly believe that there’s room for empathy in this big commercialised book world.

So if you’re reading this – thank you! – I hope you now know a bit more about Renard Press, and perhaps even about independent publishing – which, I remain convinced, is the antidote to our times. In an industry that is so busy navel-gazing that sales figures are considered the only important metrics in publishing reportage, how vital, how joyous, then, to be doing something different. Our first five years have been so broad in content and creativity, inspiring  and thought provoking, and we sit on the shoulders of our authors; for our part we shall continue to hold ourselves to account and aim to be a force for good, using our platform to publish beyond the mainstream, bringing together new worlds and voices that no longer have to hide their light. 

About the author
Will Dady grew up in the wonderfully named Great Snoring in North Norfolk, and now lives in London. He is the Publisher at Renard Press, and the founder of the Indie Press Network.

LJ Ireton, "Unclaimed"

LJ Ireton is a poet and a bookseller from London. She has a 1st Class B.A. Honours in English Language and Literature. Her poems have been published by over forty journals both in print and online, including: Green Ink Poetry, The Madrigal, Humana Obscura, Spellbinder Literary Magazine, Drawn to the Light, Acropolis Journal, Amphibian Literary Journal, Tiny Seed Journal, Black Bough, Spelt and Wild Greens Magazine. Her poetry features in the printed anthologies Spectrum (Renard Press, 2022), York Literary Review 2023 (Valley Press), Building Bridges (Renard Press, 2024), You’re Never Too Much (Macmillan, 2025) and on the BBC World Service Bookclub. Her debut poetry collection, Lessons from the Sky, was published by Ellipsis Imprints in February 2024, followed by Interlude in February 2025 by Haywood Books.

About Unclaimed, by LJ Ireton

These are lyrical, first person poems, which give voices to the bold and spirited Tudor and Stuart queens judged and condemned by history: Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Mary, Queen of Scots.

You can read more about Unclaimed on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection. 

From Unclaimed

Scotland 

          Mary, Queen of Scots

It was there. Hidden,
sleeping in my young soul
while I was scorning rocks
on curated tile.

I am awake now, and turning;
wild heather scales my bones, 
shedding my skin –
I was schooled in everything but
how earth-gold would respond
to my step 
returning,
humming at my feet —

my mourning veil
curls in the wildflowers;
they are reclaiming it
with teeth,
thistle purple sharp ghosts
arise,
my lungs smoke mist
moors and heights —

Scots King am I;
brocade and pearl
re-learning the beauty of thorns.

Elizabeth Baines, "Five Different Stories About One Thing"

Elizabeth Baines is the author of the novels The Birth Machine, Too Many Magpies and Astral Travel, and the story collections Balancing on the Edge of the World and Used to Be. She is also a prizewinning playwright for radio and stage, and an audiobook of her comedy radio series The Circle is published by Audible.

Elizabeth's website is here. 

About Five Different Stories About One Thing, by Elizabeth Baines
A ghost story, a love story, crime, science fiction and a postmodern story: here are the different experiences and attitudes of five linked characters, all affected by the same thing in the past. This is a slyly subversive experiment in genre, exploring the legacy of generational trauma.

You can read more about Five Different Stories About One Thing on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories. 

From Five Different Stories About One Thing

Extract from "Home," a ghost story

As she opens the garden gate, something flicks, a crack in the light. A black bird flying up from the hedge.

"Male blackbird," says her twelve-year-old nephew, Sam. He has come up behind her with one of the boxes out of the van.

Her sister Sarah follows, carrying another. "Emma, it’s so quaint!"

They stand and survey the tiny terraced cottage, the place where she’ll be now, a single woman once more, beginning again. The stone walls, the deep-set little windows, their paint flaking, the uneven-looking slates on the roof. The unkempt garden, which Sarah says she’ll get in shape in no time, pale primroses half-hidden in the long grass. A cherry tree, its basket of still-bare branches glinting in the afternoon light.

Sam, mad on birds, mad on nature and science, peers into the hedge. "I bet there’s a nest."

Sarah’s husband and his mate lug in the bed and struggle with it on the angle of the narrow stone stairs.

Sarah spins in the little add-on kitchen. "You’ll be OK here." Big sister protector. Leaning back into the role she had in their childhood, their troubled childhood. It’s way in the past now, their father long dead and gone, yet here she is still playing the little sister-mother. "Lick of paint, new units, maybe, in time."

"Cool," says Sam, opening the iron door beside the fireplace in the one downstairs room, the old oven.

She would like them to go now. She wants to be alone with her new independence, and to savour the house for herself.

At last, in a tangle of voices and banging van doors, they’re off, Sarah and her family away back to their impenetrable domestic life.

The atmosphere of the house sifts around her. Smells of wood and stone, a slight whiff of mould that, now the house is occupied, should soon be banished. A soft pressure of history. A new history for her to belong to, she thinks.

Something shifts in the room above, a sound like a shove, and for a split-second she thinks someone’s still there ...

Joanna Nadin, "When the World Ends"

 

Dr Joanna Nadin is a former broadcast journalist and special adviser to the Prime Minister. Since leaving politics she’s written more than 100 books for adults and children, including the Sunday Times bestselling Worst Class in the World series, the Flying Fergus series with Sir Chris Hoy, and the acclaimed Joe All Alone, which is now a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. She’s been nominated five times for the Carnegie Medal for Writing, and shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and twice for the Lollies. She’s an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at University of Bristol.

About When the World Ends, by Joanna Nadin
When the unthinkable happens to the planet, two ragtag groups of kids on opposite sides of England beat the odds and escape death. But they soon realise that the only way to be truly safe is to seek a place they've only heard about in stories. As their treacherous journeys unfold, can they help each other survive - even when the world is ending around them? 

You can read more about When the World Ends on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel.

From When the World Ends

Be Prepared

The government said to 
stop using plastic and 
time all our showers and 
turn off the heating, but
it wasn’t enough. 

The government gave  
instructions to comfort us. 
To make us feel we stood 
a chance, when we haven’t got 
a single hope. 

 
Flood

You think it will be silent when it rises.
But it comes in a 
thunder and rush,
a clatter and clanking of 
cars smashing on lamp-posts and
the sides of fried chicken shops,
of things in the water that 
should be on land. 
And over it all,
car alarms and fire sirens, 
and the screaming of people
who know they are as good as
dead. 

 
Guess What

Everyone is an expert on
what will happen next. 

The navy, says Mrs Witter, who’s seen 
Chinooks on the TV so she 
knows what she’s talking about. 
The navy will take us to Culdrose or
Yeovil.

Armageddon Terry reckons the water will
sink by midweek and 
we’ll be able to rescue ourselves – 
our own handsome princes. 

The tourists only care whether
they’ll get a refund and when
they can post their one-star review and if
any trains will leave from Par or Liskeard. 

And all the while, me and Roshan play cards 
and try to guess who would win in a fight between
a dinosaur and Armageddon Terry,
while I try not to wonder where my mum is 
or if she is at all.