Nine Arches Press
Adventures in poetry
Primers: Volume Seven
Jade Cuttle, Antonia Taylor and Laura Varnam
Selecting editor: Katie Hale
ISBN: 978-1-913437-98-5
eISBN: 978-1-913437-99-2
Price: £11.99
Publication date: 8th August 2024
Format: Paperback / eBook
Territories: World
Extent: 72pp
DCF: Poetry Collections
In 2023, Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for a seventh time, in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Katie Hale 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: Jade Cuttle, Antonia Taylor and Laura Varnam.
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.
Praise for Primers Volume Seven:
"The poems in Primers: Volume Seven take us to the heart of human experience: love, heritage, identity, grief, and humour. Through playful language and form, the poems excavate what it means to belong – to a nation, to an identity, to the earth. These are poems that speak out, whose voices are heard long after you close the book on the final one." – Katie Hale
"Primers: Volume Seven demonstrates the impressive reach of contemporary poetry - and for debut writers to show their dextrous ability to encompass and embrace the wider world in subjects close to their hearts. Whether that is in archaeology as a way of unearthing and carefully examining identity, as in Jade Cuttle's work, the fractured nature of nations, their stories and our inheritance in Antonia Taylor's poems, or the mother/monster at last given her larger-than-life voice in Laura Varnam's re-imaginings of Beowulf, this is new poetry at its most bracing, brilliant and best" – Jane Commane
Jade Cuttle is a BBC New Generation Thinker and former Arts Commissioning Editor at The Times, completing AHRC-funded research into British Nature Poets of Colour at Cambridge. Since her Masters in Poetry at UEA she has won a Northern Writers Award, Arts Council and PRS Foundation grants, first place in BBC Proms Poetry Competition, National Poetry Competition longlisting and selection for Faber's Writing Chance. She's a Ledbury Critic and Poetry School tutor, anthologised by Carcanet and broadcast across the BBC. Her albums of poem-songs include Algal Bloom and Orchid Duets.
www.jadecuttle.co.uk @JadeCuttle
Antonia Taylor is a British Cypriot communications strategist and poet, and writes The Conversation, a newsletter on thoughtful marketing and creative living. She is currently working on her first collection of poems centred on diasporic identity, war, bi-culturalism, empire, womanhood, and violence. Her work has been featured in publications includingPropel, Ambit, Harana, Marble Magazine, Dear Reader, Ink Sweat & TearsandAtriumas well as a new anthology of Reading poets from Two Rivers Press.
Laura Varnam is the Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, Oxford. She is working on a poetry collection inspired by the women of the Old English epicBeowulf. Her poems have been published in journals includingBad Lilies, Banshee Lit, Berlin Lit, Dust Poetry, MIR Online, Osmosis Press, Wet Grain, Under the Radarand in the anthologyGods & Monsters.Her poems have also beenpublished with creative-critical essays inpostmedievalandAnnie Journal,andher academic work on late medieval literature and culture is widely published.
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In 2021, Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for a sixth time, in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Rishi Dastidar and Jane Commane as selecting editors. After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist to shortlist, three poets emerged as clear choices:Kym Deyn, Estelle Price and Fathima Zahra.
The Nine Arches Press blog features poems from many of our poets, as well as interviews and articles.
