Adventures in poetry
Bycatch
Caroline Smith
ISBN: 9781916760288
eISBN: 9781916760295
Price: £11.99
Publication date: 9th October 2025
Format: Paperback / eBook
Territories: World
Extent: 72pp
DCF: Poetry Collections
A deep-sea trawler, dementia destroys all life in its path: friendships, the symbiosis of family and ultimately the self. In Bycatch, a new collection by the Ted Hughes Prize shortlisted-poet Caroline Smith, these poems ask where personhood is when memory and language are gone. They chart the faltering years of a life gradually scraped bare by dementia yet find amongst the isolation and sadness moments of epiphany and joy.
Caroline Smith trained as a sculptor at Goldsmiths College. She now lives in Wembley where she works with refugees. The Immigration Handbook was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and translated into Italian. Smith is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her work has won prizes and awards. She has given readings at festivals and in universities around the world.
The Field in Winter, the third collection of poetry by David Clarke, winner of the Michael Marks Award, elegantly reflects on memory, time, and the very particular landscape of loss, in a calendar of poems, a ‘charm of words’ that track and loop through seasons of nature and living.
The relationship between the environment, the human body and the self takes centre stage here in poetry that is concerned with being in the world - senses alive to the detail of things, the trunk of a linden tree , the shock of cold water, the frenzy of bees and blossom.
Find out more about The Field in Winter
The Nine Arches Press blog features poems from many of our poets, as well as interviews and articles.