Nine Arches Press
Adventures in poetry
Primers Volume Eight
Carl Alexandersson, Rachel Jeffcoat, and Olivia Tuck.
Edited by Laurie Bolger
ISBN: 9781916760448
eISBN: 9781916760455
Price: £11.99
Publication date: 6th August 2026
Format: Paperback / eBook
Territories: World
Extent: 72pp
DCF: Poetry Collections
In 2025, Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for an eighth time, in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Laurie Bolger as selecting editor.
After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist
to shortlist, three poets emerged as clear choices: Carl Alexandersson, Rachel Jeffcoat, and Olivia Tuck. Primers Volume Eight now showcases their exceptional and groundbreaking new work in poetry.
Carl Alexandersson is a queer poet based between Glasgow and London, hailing from Småland, Sweden. He was Highly Commended for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2022, a runner-up for the Grierson Verse Prize 2022, and selected for the BBC Words First programme in 2021. His work has appeared in Atrium, streetcake magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, and more. His debut poetry pamphlet Förgätmigej // Forget-me-not was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in 2023.
Read a poem by Carl at our blog.
Rachel Jeffcoat is a Yorkshire-born, Hampshire-based poet and educator whose work has been widely published, including in Poetry Ireland Review, Under the Radar, Banshee, Tears in the Fence and First Aid (Pan Macmillan 2025). She was one of the winners of the 2024 Candlestick Press competition, Poems of Light, has been nominated for Pushcart and Forward Prizes, and was most recently Commended in the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize.
Olivia Tuck’s work has been published by the Poetry Society and Broken Sleep, and in Propel, Under the Radar, Poetry Wales (forthcoming) and Magma (forthcoming). She won the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize, was placed second in the 2023 Jane Martin Poetry Prize awarded by Girton College, Cambridge, and was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. She is an associate editor at Lighthouse.
You may also like...
Primers Volume Seven now brings together a showcase from three distinctive poets, exploring everything from mudlarking and making a ‘mossary’, to the borderlands of conflicts and a bold retelling of an Old English epic. Through lively engagement with language, deep connection to place and time, and unearthing the stories of myth, history and peoples, these revealing poems offer an insightful collection of new work from some of poetry’s most talented emerging voices.
The Nine Arches Press blog features poems from many of our poets, as well as interviews and articles.
