Books published by Nine Arches Press

Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, BBC Contains Strong Language and the British Council, Unwritten invites poets of the Caribbean diaspora from around the world to explore new perspectives on the Caribbean experience during the First World War. Featuring new poetry by Jay Bernard, Malika Booker, Kat Francois, Ishion Hutchinson, Anthony Joseph and more.

Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka and Daniel Sluman co-edit Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, a ground-breaking anthology examining the poetics of disabled and D/deaf cultures. With contributions that span Vispo to Surrealism, and range from hard-hitting political commentary to intimate lyrical pieces âEUR" these poets refuse to perform or inspire according to tired old narratives. Five years after the seminal U.S. anthology, Beauty is a Verb, Nine Arches Press brings you its exciting UK progeny: Stairs and Whispers. The first of its kind and packed with fierce poetry, essays, photos and links to accessible online videos, this book showcases a diversity of styles, opinions, and survival strategies for a world that often works to shut us down.

Beginning With Your Last Breath, the debut poetry collection by Roy McFarlane, explores love, loss, adoption and identity in precise and emotionally-charged poetry. From bereavement comes forth a life story in poems; the journey of sons, friends, lovers, parents, and all the moments of growing-up, discovery, falling in and out of love, and learning to say goodbye that come along the way. Themes of place, identity, history, and race are interwoven with personal narratives in poems that touch on everything from the ‘Tebbit Test’ and Marvin Gaye to the Black Country, that ‘place just off the M6’. McFarlane’s poems are beautifully focused and crafted, moving their readers between both the spiritual and the sensual worlds with graceful, rapturous hymns to the transformative power of love.  

Love, sex, boats and friendship. And yet Jo Bell's second poetry collection, Kith, is about so much more, as these bold and generous poems interweave bigger questions of place, identity and community and what these mean to us, here and now. Delighting in the belting, beautiful turn-of-phrase, Jo Bell's poems are lyrical and joyous, but always precise and clear as birdsong. They take us the long way home, plot histories along the route of backwaters, and are occasionally diverted for a roll in the hay; hearts are broken and boats are dry-docked. There will be tears, but there will also be love, safe harbours, and the company of wise and faithful kith. Delighting in the belting, beautiful turn-of-phrase, Jo Bell's poems are lyrical and joyous, but always precise and clear as birdsong. They take us the long way home, plot histories along the route of backwaters, and are occasionally diverted for a roll in the hay; hearts are broken and boats are dry-docked. There will be tears, but there will also be love, safe harbours, and the company of wise and faithful kith. Praise for Jo Bell: 'Witty, sexy and deft, Jo Bell's verse has an easy charm that hides a sometimes painful honesty. There is melancholy as well as mischief here, and a real poets' eye and ear for the foibles of being human. Kith is a wonderful collection.' - Stuart Maconie 'Jo Bell is one of the most exciting poets now writing and no time is wasted in the company of her work.' - Carol Ann Duffy 'Any time you are tempted to think that humour in poetry means 'light verse', turn to Jo Bell. You will find lightness, certainly, but in the sense of deftness, a light touch aimed at something lit up, suddenly, close to the heart.' - Philip Gross