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Both of the two most recent New Walk pamphlets, by Richie McCaffery and D. A. Prince respectively:
D. A. PRINCE, CONTINUOUS PRESENT
NWE 29.2
ISBN 978-1-7392812-8-1
Just a few notes — the radio in the next room
playing to emptiness, and here’s more of distance
than a map can show. The air holds the tune,
just for now, close and clear,
like mountains before rain.
Is there such a thing as an ‘average moment’? If so, what might it contain? The varied immediacy of the natural world, perhaps, richly green; a conversation on a suburban bus or at the haidresser; or the monotony of the M1 in heavy traffic, where the relentless pressure from heavy lorries and their mission statements – Driven by Perfection, Optimal Solutions, Your Tomorrow Delivered Today – tower over you and your small car. While the continuity of time brings the past close to the present, just out of sight there are other worlds: the what-ifs, parallel lives and choices you might have made. These poems explore the textures of routine experience but also glimpse alternative dimensions within and beyond our daily lives.
Since 2008 D.A.Prince has published three collections with HappenStance Press. The second, Common Ground, won the East Midlands Book Award in 2015. The third, The Bigger Picture (2022), includes ‘The Window’, Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes anthology for 2020. Her poems have also made less conventional appearances: as bookmarks, on posters on the Longbenton Metro station in Newcastle, and even, handwritten, on biscuit wrappers as part of the Wrapper Rhymes installation at StAnza in 2020. Prince reviews contemporary poetry for London Grip, The Friday Poem and Orbis among other literary magazines.
'Her work is subtle and sensitive, but never sentimental. Here is a world of keen tenderness and humorous certainties.' - Alison Brackenbury
RICHIE McCAFFERY, SKAIL
NWE 29.1
ISBN 978-1-7392812-7-4
In her soft Flemish it was lepeltje –
‘little spoon’ – the way they held each
other in bed like silverware in its tray.
As a child at school, he cut himself
clumsily carving a ladle in Woodwork,
later used at home to dole out nothing.
‘Skail’ is an old Scots word meaning a scattering or dispersal. The poems in this pamphlet take place in the aftermath of a pandemic, and in the dissolution of a long-term relationship. With ‘skail’ comes loss and confusion, but also the possibility of renewal.
Richie McCaffery is the author of a number of poetry pamphlets as well as three full collections: Cairn and Passport (both Nine Arches Press) and Summer / Break (Shoestring Press). He is a teacher, literary critic and scholar of Scottish literature, and the author of Scotland’s Harvest: Scottish Poetry and World War Two (Brill, 2023).
'A poet who is a master of holding back as well as knowing when to let loose. He is closer to Marvell than Donne but very much a metaphysical.' - Ian Stephen
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POSTAGE INCLUDED IN PRICE, WORLDWIDE.