HUMAN CONNECTION, POETIC WAYS

AND UNCERTAIN FUTURES

West Midlands Independent publisher and Arts Council England NPO

Nine Arches Press announces 2026 poetry list

First row, l-r: Jennifer Wong, Rishi Dastidar, Kym Deyn, Daniel Sluman and Dillon Jaxx.

Second row, l-r: Roy McFarlane, Shagufta K Iqbal, Katie Griffiths, Mary Mulholland and Jessica Mookherjee.

From friendships to family histories, AI to chronic illness, an ambitious and adventurous Nine Arches Press 2026 poetry list has just been announced.

Birmingham-based independent poetry publisher and Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation Nine Arches Press are delighted to share their full list of new publications for 2026. The ambitious and adventurous list includes poetry debuts from exciting new voices and ground-breaking new work from familiar names and established authors.

The first poetry publication of the year will be a much-anticipated poetry collection by Hong Kong-born poet and editor Jennifer Wong. Light Year is a meditation on time, friendships and love, offering glimpses into the journeys of a migrant, artist and a mother – what it is we hold dear in life and the time difference between memories and place. Jennifer Wong’s previous collection with Nine Arches Press, Letters Home 回家, was described by Hannah Lowe as “intricate, multifaceted poems" and was also named Poetry Book Society Wildcard Choice.

In March, Rishi Dastidar’s fourth poetry collection Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak will be published, with poems determined to do the generous work of love and hope - a perfect burst of joy in challenging times, effervescent and seriously playful, romancing cityscapes and bursting with wit. The collection has already been praised by poet and author of Delphi, Clare Pollard: “Dastidar has an impeccable ear for the language of our epoch. Seductive and sublime.”

A debut by Kym Deyn, finalist of the Nine Arches Press Primers scheme in 2021, tarot reader, librarian and editor based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, will be published in April. Folkish is a trickster figure masquerading as a poetry collection. Full of ghosts, worms, saints, and Northern English folklore, Deyn’s debut is playful, spirited and absolutely furious – moving between the alive, the legendary and the haunted in endlessly inventive forms.

Pain Songs, a fourth collection by disability rights activist and TS Eliot Prize shortlisted poet Daniel Sluman, will be published in May. Written through the writer’s experience of chronic pain, the book examines the ways the body and the world interact and intersect, exploring intimacy, fertility, pregnancy, and what the repercussions are of living inside a body that feels like “an alarm that rings and rings”. Co-editor of the first major UK Disability poetry anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, Daniel Sluman has three previous poetry collections published by Nine Arches Press.

The debut poetry collection by Dillon Jaxx, winner of a Rebecca Swift Writing Prize 2022, the Brotherton prize 2024, and the Live Canon International Poetry Competition 2025, will be published by Nine Arches in early July 2026. Bold and precise, unweather in me is a mixtape from an eighties childhood which moves between requiems for a dead brother, anthems for the queer self, and love songs for a body sabotaging itself and its keeper through chronic illness.

In a new development, Nine Arches Press will also be publishing the non-fiction debut by renowned poet, performer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature Roy McFarlane in July. Part memoir, part meditation on the art of poetry and what it is to be a poet in the modern age, The Way of the Poet is a journal following the daily life in creative practice. Full of guidance, encouragement and reflections on the personal, political and radical nature of the craft of writing in troubled times, this will be a ground-breaking book from one of the new millennium’s most inspiring and socially-engaged writers.

Primers Volume Eight will be published in August by Nine Arches Press and will showcase exceptional new work by poets yet to publish a debut. Having launched the nationwide Primers scheme for an eighth time in 2025 with poet, performer and tutor Laurie Bolger as selecting editor, and after reading hundreds of anonymous entries, three emerging poets Carl Alexandersson, Rachel Jeffcoat, and Olivia Tuck have been announced as finalists. Each poet will receive mentoring before publication and there will be online and in-person launch events for the collection in summer 2026.

Poet and performer Shagufta K Iqbal, who has performed widely from TEDx to WOMAD, Shambala and Glastonbury Festivals, and worked with the V&A, Tate, Southbank Centre, Hyderabad, Lagos, and Toronto Poetry Festivals, will be joining Nine Arches Press to publish her second poetry collection in September. Full of reflection and hope, Blue, Babe examines the dynamics of family life, and how humans hold on to love and survival. It delves into the personal stories of women amidst war, within colonial legacies and climate injustice.

Also in September, Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize 2024 winner Katie Griffiths returns to publish a second collection with Nine Arches Press. Mindset Mindrise raises questions about the reach, foibles and sanctity of the human mind at a time when its capacities are being outsourced into AI; tech bros are set alongside the domestic feminine, and rational points of view rub against unrestricted imagination. Griffiths is also a singer-songwriter, formerly in the band A Woman in Goggles and at present part of the harmony group Fells and Such.

A further debut collection will be published in October 2024. Mary Mulholland’s The Dodo Stories delves into the complex and haunting dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship, framed by a secretive maternal lineage in Guyana. The collection paints a picture of the struggles that haunt a family’s past, the fractured inheritance of diaspora, and intergenerational grief. Pushcart Prize-nominated Mary Mulholland is founder of the poetry platform, Red Door Poets, and is a founder / editor of the journal The Alchemy Spoon.

Finally, November 2026 sees publication of The Universe is an Animal by Jessica Mookherjee. The poems follow a woman’s journey in a time of seismic geopolitical and climatic change, and explore the fragility of a body facing the enormity of a future world and the human need for creation, resilience, and each other. Mookherjee has been twice highly commended for Best Single Poem in the Forward Prizes in 2017 and 2021. Author of three previous collections from Nine Arches Press, her second collection, Tigress, was shortlisted for the Ledbury Prize in 2021.

Nine Arches Press are part of sales and marketing agency Inpress Books, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, and are distributed through BookSource Glasgow.

This ambitious and dynamic programme of publishing for 2026 has been made possible by the investment in our activity by Arts Council England through National Portfolio Organisation funding 2023-26, and Nine Arches Press gratefully acknowledge their support.

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