BLAKE MORRISON, SKIN & BLISTER

Blake Morrison writes: ‘Between June and September 2021, I wrote this series of poems about my sister, who had died at the age of 67 two years previously… Skin & Blister – Cockney rhyming slang for sister – seemed a good title for the poems: our relationship was intimate but also painful.’

Blake Morrison is best known for his memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me, but is the author of several poetry collections. A new memoir, Two Sisters, also about his sister, comes out this year.

PETER CARPENTER, TINTORETTO’S ANGELS

Tintoretto’s Angels by Peter Carpenter is daring and restrained, modest and ambitious, personal and socially committed. The focus is on nature and locality – names of creatures and flowers and places – and people – abound, giving the poems a real rootedness.

Peter Carpenter’s poems have appeared in many literary journals and he has had six previous collections. He co-directs Worple Press.

SADIE MASKERY, LOVE SHANTY

Love Shanty is Sadie Maskery’s first publication from Mariscat, a lively new collection of poems about love and friends, myths and family and family myths – flavoured with the author’s characteristic deadpan humour and the odd satiric twist.

Sadie Maskery lives in East Lothian. Her first full collection, Shouting at Crows, was published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press.