Bøger udgivet af Broken Sleep Books

Proverbs for a Woman Drinking Alone is a pamphlet of poetry which tackles class, grief, and sexuality. Talia Randall confronts these themes alternately with closed fists and open hands, lacing humour into even the darkest subjects. These poems claim a sense of place and belonging while creating a space for the reader to listen to Randall's sharp and precise voice, one that is at once colloquial and lyrical, playful and sombre. This is a book which both demands and fulfils the reader's attention.

¿¿Wanted is chiefly a book about the resilient female spirit, containing the idea of resilience as much as female abuse and sacrifice. The resulting monologues are ranging in style - from outlaw to lyric and dialect - yet cohere through themes and forms as they explore what it means to want and be wanted: women munitions workers wanted by the government, a daughter wanting relief for her suffering father, the desire for love and self-worth, a Goddess wanting to shatter the perfect pane - taking issue with her so-called God.

Landsick inverts the idea of seasickness - in this pamphlet it is the lives we lead on land that are unstable, uncertain and often nauseous, while the ocean's rhythm provides moments of solace, rest or hope. In exploring this inversion, Landsick engages with the wider theme of connectivity and discord between humans and the natural world. This a book that embraces the beauty and joys of the natural world, while also reflecting on the perils and complexities of human life, and takes us 'all the way to the bottom of the deep blue sea'.

Eating the Archive by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh offers a stunning portrait of life in the Baddawi refugee camp in Lebanon, where Qasmiyeh was born. The poems examine even the harshest aspects of the camp with tenderness, pondering existential questions about time, family, language and identity. A mother's blurry photograph, a father's sharpened knife, blood stirred into watery lentils and other glimpses into Qasmiyeh's upbringing enrich this raw and profound collection.

Titled after a popular Instagram filter, Liquid Crystal Lovesick Demon by Poppy Cockburn draws on multimedia aesthetics to consider the ways our progressing post internet reality can complexify, unite and alienate. Touching on film, social media, news coverage and marketing, these dynamic, decadent poems revel in contemporary dystopia, slyly poking fun at and probing the dark heart of the malaise.

Foundry Songs examines shame, grief, and loss through the emotional upheaval of a troubled adolescence pitted against a post-industrial backdrop. Both gritty and lyrical, combining cutting wit with poignant descriptions of trauma.

Nathaniel King's Ghost Clinic is a luminous inquiry into the ghosts that haunt and comfort us everyday. A delicately interconnected series of lyrical essays, this compelling debut performs a sly autopsy on our cultural moment. Drawing upon a kaleidoscope of voices from the humorous to the meditative, Ghost Clinic chronicles the myriad of spirits that stalk the waking world. From how to conjure ancient Japanese spirits, to a suburban fast-food chain permeated by the ghosts of pandemic victims, to a drug-addled sitcom star visited by the apparition of his former agent, these poems invite us to stop and consider what happens after the lights go out, the funding is cut, and the cameras stop rolling.

Dirty Martini by Natalie Shaw is an exuberant and anarchic pamphlet. Shaw's approach to poetry is highly original and likely to surprise readers with its juxtaposition of contemporary language and cocktail of strange subjects, often culled from the animal world. Fresh, funky and restlessly innovative, Dirty Martini flamboyantly follows the footsteps of Selima Hill and the feminine surreal into absurd, deliciously delirious realms.

Ian Patterson's Shell Vestige Disputed presents poems which take great pleasure in the mystery of language and the amenability of meaning. Patterson writes with a clear focus on the stress and intonation of words and phrases, crafting complex and puzzling poems which are reminiscent of Prynne and the English surrealists. Shell Vestige Disputed is a collection full of beauty and surprise.

Jessica Mookherjee's Desire Lines is a deeply thrilling joyride into a glamorous/anti-glamorous world of sex, drugs and stolen books. Mookherjee crafts, largely through prose-poetry, a love letter to her golden years in eighties and nineties London. The poetry erupts into choppy river-washed rhythm with tales so urgent and visceral, life simply sings from the pages, wrapped up in gin, leather jackets and cheap nail polish.

George Neame's The Infinite Flood is a pamphlet which explores the vastness of space through the unremarkable details of modern life: lasagne sheets stretch out like layers of time, snooker balls roll into constellations, an astronaut's fingerprints are left in frost on a postbox. The Infinite Flood is full of warm and inviting poems which subtly evoke important questions about our place in the universe, written with stellar lyricism and attention to the melody of language.

Terra Forming by Chloë Proctor offers a mess-making of language and grammar through the prism of contemporary eco-poetry. In this collection the natural world is re-conceived in the semantics of the digital world, fungi, in particular, play a prominent role in Proctor's out-sourcing and unravelling of descriptive linguistics. Terra Forming is a prescient and innovative addition to the flourishing garden of eco-poetry.

In Ghost Methods Síofra McSherry presents a complex and loving portrait of Sean Bonney, one that is both personal and political, where death is difficult not in the leaving, but in 'the staying gone'. Here, in these outraged and beautiful poems, McSherry reminds us of the urgency of keeping the fire burning, of the importance of honoring those who have passed, of the significance of the moment that takes friends home, of the grace of the day.

how small we are, how little we know. is a beguiling debut pamphlet with poems centred on a rich mix of themes. This pamphlet is humorous, telling, eccentric, a neat introduction to a poet of nuance and delicate poise.

Musical and sometimes whimsical in the text's wry regard for the eponymous protagonist, Michael is a pamphlet about ghosts, grief, and longing for connection in post-Brexit Britain.

Zero Hours follows the fragmented intersecting stories of a range of characters on zero-hour contracts in Glasgow. A cleaner runs her daughter a bath in an unused guestroom, a waiter witnesses a violent crime, a virtual receptionist takes bookings for a burned down hotel, a server at a football stadium defies gravity, and a chef realises that his migrant colleagues have been invited to a "staff meeting" without him. The form of these stories, sketches and scenes reflects the fragmented nature of precarious contracts.

The Broken Sleep Books Anthology showcases the best writing from the press in 2022, featuring extracts from every publication, covering poetry, non-fiction and short fiction. An essential purchase for anyone interested in new writing, or curious about the work of a vibrant, dynamic and award-winning independent press.Authors included:E. P. Jenkins, Azad Ashim Sharma, Sam Quill, Cai Draper, Bobby Parker, Trevor Ketner, Fiona Larkin, Samuel Tongue, Dean Rhetoric, J. H. Prynne, John Richardson, John Welson, David Spittle, Aaron Kent, Matthew Kosinski, Dide, SJ Fowler, Aimée Lê, George Sandifer-Smith, Colin Bancroft, Rochelle Roberts, Niall Bourke, Claire Trévien, Marie Lando, Len Lukowski, Katy Wareham Morris, U. G. Világos, John Greening, Amber Rollinson, Tom Snarsky, Nóra Blascsók, Scout Tzofiya Bolton, James Byrne, Omar Musa, Lucy Rose Cunningham, Cliff Forshaw, Robert Kiely, Stuart McPherson, Liam Bates, Andreea Iulia Scridon, Lucy Holme, Gita Ralleigh, Ella Sadie Guthrie, Andre Bagoo, Daniele Pantano, Taylor Edmonds, Kate Frances, James McDermott, Chris Laoutaris, Fokkina McDonnell, Caleb Parkin, Chrissy Williams, Taylor Strickland, Robert Bal, Kelly Davio, Abdul Kader El-Janabi, Ay¿egül Y¿ld¿r¿m, Lauren Pope, Emma Filtness, Angela Cleland, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Mariah Whelan, Alexandra Melville, Chris Neilan, John Osborne, Briony Collins, Daniel Roy Connelly, Andrea Mason, Caleb Nichols, Sarah-Clare Conlon, Tania Hershman, Saskia McCracken, Kristian Doyle

A book keenly aware of life's brevity, and death's ubiquity, Prayers is a series of odes to the transitory nature of living, and the inherent impermanence of all things.

"I am a muslim not a terrorist" is Azad Ashim Sharma's opening gambit in Against the Frame. The book's geography is vast; encompassing Meccan sands, the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Barking, East London. Sharma opens brand-new avenues for political poetry in short bursts of incandescent rage, washing his hands of the burden of catering to, in Sean Bonney's words, "a small racist island" and writing, brilliantly, the truth.

Companions of His Thoughts More Green is a celebration of the work of Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). One of the finest of the Metaphysical poets, Marvell did not come into his own until his rediscovery in the twentieth century, and now he is rediscovered anew in an anthology of contemporary poets writing in the shadow of the climate emergency and energised by the modern ecopoem. The poets of Companions of His Thoughts More Green respond to Marvell's garden and pastoral poems, his political satires, his love poems, and his all-encompassing philosophical wit. The book also comes with an introduction and afterword placing Marvell in a contemporary context and affirming the continuing poetic possibilities of 'a green thought in a green shade.'Contributors: Ian Duhig, Jason Allen-Paisant, Tom Cook, Martin Malone, Ingrid Leonard, Chris Arksey, Mary McCollum, Aaron Kent, Nuzhat Bukhari, Malcolm Watson, Suna Afshan, Rory Waterman, Camille Ralphs, Matthew Francis, Cliff Forshaw, Ishion Hutchinson, Carol Rumens, Will Harris, Emily Berry, Sean O'Brien, Nyla Matuk, Alec Finlay, Angela Leighton, Justin Quinn, Jana Prikryl, Stephanie Burt, Jon Thompson, Paul Muldoon, Stewart Mottram, David Wheatley.

Close your Eyes... is a blinding pamphlet which opens: "[i]n the unforgiving light of / the bread aisle". This is a remarkable pamphlet with the verve and vivacity to describe sound by what it is not, "silence".