Bøger udgivet af Valley Press

¿When you turn on the bathroom light your reflection stares numbly back at you, gormless and vacant. You blink. Your eyes are yellow, as is your skin. Yoüve lost weight: your pyjamas hang off your arms like the wilting leaves of a dying plant.You stare at yourself in the mirror for several surreal minutes. The thing before you is not you. But it is.¿In January 2011, aged 21, Tom Preston was diagnosed with stage 4 advanced aggressive lymphoma. His chances of survival were optimistically placed at around 40%. This short, autobiographical work tells the story of the fight in the months that followed ¿ but this is no ordinary cancer memoir.The Boy in the Mirror is written in the second person ¿ so the events in this book are happening to you, the reader, living through the hope, love, suffering, death and black comedy encountered by Tom during the battle to save himself."A raw account of his months of excrutiating pioneering treatment." - The Sunday Times"This is ultimately a book about love, trust, and overcoming death-defying odds." - The Sun

Bird, beast or man, we each have the same element at our core: bones. While our forms may change, the bones always remain ¿ and in this thrilling debut, the poet celebrates their beauty and structure though folk tales, philosophy, day dreams and night terrors. Aided by a host of characters including a girl who fell in love with a mountain, a woman who can only ever look at you sideways, and a man made of bees, Caroline Hardaker creates a dozen unforgettable worlds entirely her own.

Sparks is the third collection of passionate, poignant poetry from much-loved Hull-based author Norah Hanson. The fiery wit and hard-won wisdom that characterised her previous collections are here, intact, with a new level of clarity and purpose adding weight to the words - without losing the warmth, wonder, and laugh-out-loud observational skills that have won Norah readers across the world. Now six-times a great-grandmother, the poet's life experience shines through each page. There are no riddles or literary exercises here; Norah's refreshingly (and deceptively) direct language seems to rise from the earth itself.

Here is a book that celebrates the joys, the aches, the lapses, the frustrations and the creaks of the retirement years. With fifty funny, nostalgic and poignant rhymes about childhood memories, hair loss, modern technology, manners, packaging, cats, grandchildren and more it¿s the perfect read for those of fifty-plus who like a chuckle.

Before the Second World War, there were around seventy cinemas operating in Leeds. Since 2014, Valley Press poets James Nash and Matthew Hedley Stoppard have been visiting the sites of these abandoned picturehouses and writing about them in verse ¿ as well as covering the topic of cinema-going in general.

Saleem Peeradina is one of the most important Indian poets writing in the English language. Final Cut, his fifth collection, finds his attention turning to new subjects ¿ birds, their migration and intelligence; fruit, as it appears in memories, mythology and reality; objects (shaving brush, stapler, juicer, skillet) and ¿extraordinary ordinary¿ people, all finding their voices and speaking up.

Kelley Swain¿s The Naked Muse is a subtle, fascinating memoir about art ¿ from the object¿s point of view ¿ as well as an extended meditation on travel, painting and what it means to see.Swain describes her first experience disrobing for a group of painters, modelling for international artists over the course of six years, and posing as four saints for the frieze of a chapel in Sicily. Inviting readers into the intensely personal world of life drawing, Swain brings out the light and shade; both on the canvas and within ourselves.

A beautiful anthology featuring new writing responding to the life and death of David Oluwale, a Nigerian immigrant to Leeds found drowned in the River Aire in 1969. The anthology also includes selections from previously published works by writers including Kester Aspden, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Zodwa Nyoni, and competition judges Ian Duhig and Caryl Phillips.¿In Claudia Rankine¿s Citizen the speaker is asked in England if she will write about Mark Duggan. She replies, ¿Why don¿t you?¿Our competition entrants rose to that challenge over David Oluwale¿s story and its continuing echoes for oursociety in new and moving ways. Their work stands confidently beside that of better-known writers in ananthology all can be proud of, a document of their refusal to be silent in the face of abusive power.¿

One of the great 'undiscovered' post-war British poets, Nigel Gerrans' sixty-year creative journey was marked by personal reflection, piercing observation and eclectic spirituality. This generous selection, made in 2014 by the author's long-time friend and collaborator Felix Hodcroft, offers readers new and old the best possible overview of this remarkable body of work. From the call to action of 'Night Express' to the modern-day tragedy of 'Patient X', from the small triumphs of 'At Her Own Pace' to the biting satire of the previously-unpublished 'Ballad of Ted and Joan', Gerrans meets the world's gaze squarely, never failing to ask the 'necessary question' or skilfully articulate its answer. Finally, and in full, there is 'Song Sequence', a unique blend of passion and philosophy that has been a lifetime in the making; arguably the poet's crowning achievement. It Is I Who Speak is a book filled with energy; a fascinating and vital record of a wonderful writer; a collection of poems that will not fail to move and astonish all those who engage with them. "Energetic and image-laden ... this is a vivid and engaging collection of poems that deserve to live long in the memory."- Poetry Book Society Bulletin

Mr Jolly is the first collection of short stories by Michael Stewart, and contains some of the award-winning novelist¿s most extraordinary writing to date. Each tale offers a unique, utterly compelling insight into the human condition, framed by a mind-bendingly original concept that no other writer working today could ¿ or indeed would ¿ have concocted. Readers will meet a conformity-obsessed league of bald men, breaking into homes for an extended debate about the nature of freedom; discuss the nomenclature of the marshmallow with a man whose single goal in life is to witness them accidentally skewered on stiletto heels; and meet God, in perhaps the most frustrating (yet believable) depiction of the divine being in modern literature.Last phone calls, alien abductions, murders and more are grounded in stories of struggling parents, baffled lovers and lost children (some of who may live permanently onthe number 606 bus). However long you live, and however much you read, yoüll never come across another book quite like this.

In David O¿Hanlon¿s first full-length collection, precise, piercing language illuminates tales from actual, mythical and personal history ¿ making all three seem immediate, contemporary and universal. Readers will hear how ¿four unacquainted deaf men published near-identical essays deconstructing the assumed importance of sound¿, find new ways of reading the stories of Orpheus, Sisypus, Tantalus et al., and learn of a young man¿s twelve-year struggle to paint an authentic picture of the sky.