Books published by Palewell Press Ltd

Sue Proffitt's remarkable second poetry collection, The Lock-Picker, is about living alongside her mother who was suffering from dementia. Her poems explore the nature of self, memory, identity and what it truly means only to exist in the present moment. The journey from first diagnosis to its inevitable end is shown with shattering intimacy ... as if we are beamed into the scene itself.... these poems do not try to tidy or disguise; they are unflinching in their honesty and their 'refusal to forget'. There are few collections that cover this ground, and in such a way that the reader and perhaps other carers, might feel changed as a result, wiser, kinder, and as Sue Proffitt hopes in her preface, 'a little less alone'

Welling Up is the first anthology composed of poems submitted to Palewell Press, with selection based on our core values of Justice, Equality and Sustainability. Twenty-eight contributors write on the Refugee Crisis, Human Rights, War, Global Warming, Species Extinction, and Nature. At few moments in human history has any society had enough resources and a sufficiently developed sense of fairness so that none of its members felt excluded or short-changed. But now, due to climate change, the natural world's resources on which our safety and happiness depend are more threatened than ever. To have any hope of delivering Justice and Equality to the world's citizens, including refugees and displaced people, and also protection to other, increasingly endangered, species, we need to collaborate towards Environmental Sustainability.

Frances White's many interests are revealed in this fine collection : the natural world, childhood, music, poetry, family and friends, religious faith, the wider world. Her achingly moving late poems underline her ability to be bracingly honest. Readers will be drawn to her evocations of childhood in Mountain Mist, 'We thought clouds were soft shape-shifters' and of adolescence in Dandelion Child, 'a lull/before hot summers/the rush of freedom/music in the air/wild flowers in our hair/and then the longing/for red roses'

Back to Babylon, the seventh collection from London-based poet and writer, Agnes Meadows, is based on her visits to Iraq for the Babylon International Festival of Arts & Culture in 2012, 2014 and 2016, and the things she saw there. As well as poetry, Back to Babylon includes the Blog she wrote during her 2012 visit. From convivial jasmine-scented nights in the old city of Babil to the horror and grief at Al-Mawahil with its mass grave of 13,000 disappeared Iraqis, her writing takes the reader ever closer to life in this troubled region.

Richard Aronowitz's Life Lessons is a book about coming into knowledge. Not so much from reading, but from living close to the natural world, to family and to history. Tied to a conviction that "We are what we have always been", these thoughtful, well-crafted poems evoke an English pastoral tradition almost as a birthright, except that today the poet escapes, not the tensions of the Elizabethan Court, but the gargantuan features of an industrial economy.

Poetry about the homeless and how their lives evoke the legendary figure of King Arthur. Some poetry looks inwards and serves only its own ends, but the poems here serve the memory of the real people you sense behind the characters who populate it. They are portrayed with a remarkably precise eye and ear, and without any hint of sentimentality. These sharp, funny and touching poems enact their stories like scenes from a play with a cast (Spider, Chalky, Blind Mary and The Weasel are a few) who seem unnaturally vivid and real. The nicknames describe the family-like intimacy of a community existing as a subset within the larger society, a community completely at home in this lively book.

Red Winds is an account of Irma Upex-Huggins' time with the VSO in Tanzania, living and working in an environment of extreme poverty, and it charts her journey through the country and through illness and recovery from a serious accident. Red Winds is a combination of poetry and prose, letters from Africa.Irma was born in Antigua in the West Indies, finished school in Nevis and came to live in England. But as a black woman now coming from England to Tanzania she has a sense of dislocation, 'an uncomfortable sense of my 'not-belonging': when I feel that my 'Africanness' is still wandering in the Diaspora', when asked 'Kabila Gani?', meaning what is your Tribe, her reply is 'Sina'- I have none. She is marked as an Outsider by her lack of Swahili, and even by her hair, worn in a style of Maasai men.Irma is called 'Mzungu', 'different', and she writes as an Outsider of the land and the people, mostly the people. Not having a common language, she watches people closely and with compassion of their lives and their deaths. Irma is a great storyteller and her poetry has a wonderful clarity. Irma has left her own river and finds, in this new river of Africa, 'fullness and beauty'.

THREE DAYS IN DAMASCUS is a memoir about a three-year fight for a chance at love with an Iraqi refugee the author met in Syria. While travelling to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria to interview Iraqi refugees and hear some of their stories, Kim never expected to fall in love with one of them. But that is exactly what happened. This is the story of one American woman and one Iraqi man set against the backdrop of the Iraqi refugee crisis. Through actual Iraqi refugee interviews, a whirlwind middle-eastern love story and the consequently doomed, intercontinental relationship told through texts and emails with civil war, revolution and an arranged marriage as the backdrop, we learn of culture and devastation, desperation and redemption, while still never losing hope. While there are roughly 65 million refugees worldwide, approximately five million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes since the U.S led invasion of their country, most of them fleeing to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Since Syria is currently in the midst of a violent civil war, the Iraqis there are left in an extremely dangerous position- stuck between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go. This timely memoir examines the lives of dozens of these Iraqi refugees trying desperately to survive in a world blind to their plight and one Iraqi in particular: Omar. Told through a strong narrative and a surprisingly comedic lens, the reader travels with the author through this unknown, sandy terrain breaking assumptions, stereotypes and expectations - in a journey that ultimately ends in the most traditional assumption one could imagine: a Middle Eastern man agreeing to an arranged marriage. And after three years of trying to "save" Omar and salvage a life for/with him, she discovers maybe he wasn't the one who needed saving."This heartfelt memoir will take you into another world, as Kim and Omar meet and walk many of love's pathways. An American volunteer interviewing Iraqi refugees about the horrors of war, Kim falls in love with Omar, and thus begins a three-year odyssey." Chellie Campbell, author From Worry to Wealthy and The Wealthy Spirit."Kim's memoir is quite extraordinary in the way she brings you right up close, sometimes painfully, often with lots of laughs, to the situation of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria...She notices things most of us would shy away from, and she tells the story so personally, you feel you are with her...The stories of loss are told with painful, and respectful detail, biding the request from one refugee to 'tell the whole story'. Kim tells the story of Omar, and discovers he is typical of most refugees. She learns a refugee's greatest desire is to go home, and when they do move, their culture moves with them." Sybella Wilkes, UNHCR Senior Communications Officer."Kim Schultz has written a searing love story set against the backdrop of a world tragedy: the plight of millions of refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East...It is a compelling read that will make you a look at world news in a different, more personal, way." Jim Michaels, author of A Chance in Hell: The Men Who Triumphed over Iraq's Deadliest City and Turned the Tide of War"Kim Schultz has written an earnest and honest account of two people from opposite poles finding love and heartache in the long shadow of an unforgiving war. Her story is a spirited struggle against larger forces - bureaucracy, culture, religion, human displacement, and loss." Kirk W. Johnson, author of To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind and founder of the List Project.

A committed European, Derek Summers writes poems which reflect his extensive, enthusiastic travels, from St Petersburg to Van Gogh's Haarlem, from Hornchurch to St Honorat's chapel in the Alyscamps at Arles. In this, his second collection, he pursues his fascination with the contrasts between English and French language and culture.Reviewer George Beddow writes: Derek Summers' poetry is marked by sincerity, honesty and compassion. His world may be resolutely godless but he remains a pilgrim forever in pursuit of truth and beauty. There is an unashamed social and political commitment that is rare. Is the god that was missing in Dresden the same one that was found wanting in Baghdad?His poems attest to suffering on a personal scale too. In lines taut with a nervous energy, the emotion may be frighteningly stark but is couched in language rich and strange. Not Hannibal Lecter startles while Loss and In Chichester Cathedral are almost unbearably moving.There is humour and lyricism too. Scythian Warrior winks at Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo while, elsewhere, Marx, Heine and (ominously) Van Gogh make their entrances and exits - the latter in a vignette of luminous pictorial clarity.Finding consolations amid conflict - whether internal or external - is difficult at the best of times. Sharing them even more so. This is what the poet does in this new collection.