Author: amyacre
Launching 9th March: poems for my FBI agent / Charlotte Geater
‘These poems follow a vertiginous logic to reassert the dark, personal utterance as a possible escape from places where we are always seen.’ Sam Riviere
Charlotte Geater’s poems for my FBI agent takes us down a Lynchian rabbit hole in which a sad and shadowy agent follows the poet’s every move. This book’s true surrealism lies in the fidelity with which it depicts how we now live—in a world where we are each the warm applause at the end of our own nightly show, and the rabid dogs ever-ready to devour one of our own.
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Charlotte Geater lives in Walthamstow. She is a freelance editor and writer, and volunteers at a community library. Her poetry has appeared in Queen Mob’s Tea House, The White Review, Clinic and The Best British Poetry 2013. She won The White Review Poet’s Prize in 2018.
No Weakeners / Tim Wells
Suedehead, pulp horror writer, and man about town; the UK poetry scene would be a duller place without Tim Wells. In No Weakeners, he harks back to the streets that made him— captured in snapshots of his teenage love life —with trademark chutzpah and dry wit.
We stop at pubs, gigs, behind the bins, in cemeteries and sticky-floored cinemas, to honour a shimmer of fierce and formidable young women. Hard drinking and hard fighting, they are nobody’s fools. Spitting defiance: ‘a million girls are born, they do not cry but kick.’
“London poetry landmark” The Times Literary Supplement
“A neatly twisted line in rhetoric” NME, 19th May 1984
“Working class hero” The Morning Star
“Suedehead bard of N16” The Grauniad
“Thug” NME, 18th July 1984
Bad Betty Shots series #2
It’s here! The second series of Bad Betty Shots: four mini pamphlets, each containing a single long-form poem. Small but with plenty of bite, each limited-edition Shot is a concentrated hit of the author’s voice.
100 copies of each. Get them while you can!
Get all 4 Shots for £15 BUY NOW
After the Stabbing / ZENA EDWARDS BUY NOW
The Lives of the Female Poets / CLARE POLLARD BUY NOW
Give Thanks / For Shukri / AMAAL SAID BUY NOW
South of South East / BELINDA ZHAWI BUY NOW
Cover illustrations by Helen Nicholson
Launching 24th October at SET Dalston
Supported by Arts Council England
The Body You’re In / Phoebe Wagner
Phoebe Wagner’s poetry is a kind of undressing. Offering up the social and sexual uncertainties of our time, she forges these into a bolder understanding of contemporary angst. Language heady as Plath melts into a precise, Carson-like wit. Wagner’s voice is a reflexive one, referencing therapists, care plans, bingo tickets, pick-up lines, familial myths: ‘Abuela knew I was the devil when I came out like that. / That all of Spain had bled out of me.’ Formally inventive, highly visual, these poems ripple through the mind, at once cleansing and intoxicating.
“This pamphlet pinches the skin of woman, of lust, of politics.” Deanna Rodger
“An unflinching look at mind and body, and the many betrayals they can endure. As the body is covered by clothes, the mind is clothed in the body. These poems reveal a mind breaking through multiple layers of silencing, stigma and shame.” Dean Atta
“Phoebe Wagner’s poetry is filled with subtlety and wit. She’s able to see the humour in our bodies while holding how precious, delicate and how meaningful they are to us. The relationships are glimpses into intimate moments that reshape the way we see ourselves.” Sean Mahoney
Launching 6th October at SET, Dalston.
Supported by Arts Council England.
Alter Egos / a Bad Betty anthology
Hero, nemesis, spy or host? What exactly is an alter ego? In this book, 21 contemporary poets give 21 unique answers; in the process, dissecting our relationships with the self and others.
These poems expose our most essential desires and griefs, hidden in the lining between who we are and who we appear to be. Vividly alive, they rise from the page with infectious energy, in prairie boots and fishnet gloves. The writers in this book are a virtuosic breed, spinning truth into glitter and scorpion milk, bending form and language to their whims.
Poetry by Joe Andrews, Birdspeed, Susan Bradley Smith, Carl Burkitt, Toby Campion, Cat Chong, Iris Colomb, Jonah Corren, Jo Davis, Cai Draper, Laurie Eaves, Matthew Haigh, Kate B Hall, Nicki Heinen, Sue Johns, Anna Kahn, Anja Konig, Christopher Lanyon, The Repeat Beat Poet, Natalie Shaw, Rushika Wick
Edited by Amy Acre and Jake Wild Hall
Cover artwork by Bobby Parker
“As a poet who has been previously anthologised by Bad Betty Press, I know how much love and dedication goes into everything they do. This anthology reminds me of repertory theatre with a small company who are able to play many roles in quick succession. Please join me in giving the whole cast of Alter Egos a standing ovation!” The Black Flamingo (Dean Atta)
Supported by Arts Council England.
And They Are Covered in Gold Light / Amy Acre
Amy Acre’s second pamphlet, And They Are Covered in Gold Light reaches both arms out to the wild of being woman, the blood of being mother, the tragedy of being human. From deep within the dark of these poems, there is resolve; there is love; there is light.
BUY AS EDITORS’ PACK (Get Blank & And They Are Covered in Gold Light for £10)
“Reading this collection is like being hit between the eyes. Not by a stone, but by some kind of massive, multi-facetted zirconia. The language has a strange precision and intensity that’s utterly compelling. Not a word is wasted, and yet each stanza still feels dense with invention, shimmering and shifting with half-hidden valences. Although these poems draw from the mundane world, they’re forged in a true alchemist’s imagination; they come to us—and at us—dazzling.” Fran Lock
“Visceral, formally inventive and raw, these poems play new and vivid tricks on language. Acre’s voice is richly layered, fresh and unexpected; And They Are Covered In Gold Light fizzes with energy, physicality and the levitating openness of song. This collection may be short, but that doesn’t stop it feeling mighty.” Rebecca Tamás
“Amy Acre is among the best poets of this generation to cross over from London’s spoken word scene. And They Are Covered In Gold Light is pure lyrical exuberance! I’m keeping my eyes and ears on her.” Raymond Antrobus
Blank / Jake Wild Hall
‘You are grieving at the bar’ begins one of the poems in a book as intimate as it is incantational. In many ways, these words offer a microcosm for Jake Wild Hall’s Blank: a song of shared loss, anaesthetising ‘solutions’, quiet recovery. With the immediacy of a camera lens, these poems bear out the internal conflict between the vulnerability of hope and the safety of detachment. Language soars and contracts: reaching out in prayer—‘london is the world until it sings all the wrong hymns in your church’, down into the body—‘the things i have been avoiding turn to ulcers in my mouth’. Blank doesn’t have all the answers, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better talisman as you ask the questions.
BUY AS EDITORS’ PACK (Get Blank & And They Are Covered in Gold Light for £10)
“An antidote to toxic masculinity, Hall’s poems combine the pure, the delicate and the banal, conjuring a luxurious and enveloping language of hope. Beneath the sparsity and simplicity, the poems invite a deeper meditation on what it is to emerge from chaos into something newer and more life-affirming.” Melissa Lee-Houghton
“I would give anything to be able to write in such a way that hope becomes something that is utilised instead of compromised. Its power can be difficult to control, especially for those without it. Put to good use, as Hall does so perfectly in these poems, hope becomes a glowing totem around which all the horrors of the world must orbit at a distance. Here, acceptance is examined as closely as grief and mental illness, and it is that acceptance which left me feeling I had read a truly important work. Hall slows everything down to a faint heartbeat, forcing us to lean in closer, to properly hear the music of his being, and in turn the music of our own. BLANK is a gesture of intimacy, a remedy of sorts for lost souls like me, and reading these poems makes me feel more human, more willing to be accepting and kinder to myself. Money can’t buy such revelations. Only art can. Only poetry like this can. My ear to the cover of this intimate collection, to the chest of Hall’s experience, listening to the steady thump of love in transition.” Bobby Parker
She Too Is a Sailor / Antonia Jade King
Antonia Jade King’s debut pamphlet, She Too Is a Sailor is full of protest and melody. Invoking a choir of inspirational women from Beyoncé and Maya Angelou to the poet’s mother, King deconstructs what it means to be woman, to be other, to be an outsider in your own family. On love, the speaker simultaneously bites and holds back, accepting that cynicism does not render her immune and that ‘my name is not protection from men or their fists’. Intertwining pop culture with the political, this book is a reminder of art’s capacity to reclaim narratives.
“She Too Is a Sailor is a work of fresh and direct testimony; these are poems that witness identity, womanhood and the mother-daughter relationship as a site of both pressure and empathy. Searching, probing, and never afraid to face down difficult subject matter, these are formally curious poems where ‘love without politics feels fragile’ and the necessary business of catharsis and transformation is achieved with admirable honesty and arresting wit.” Karen McCathy Woolf
“Filled with passionate, personal and political poems. Well crafted and engaging. A wonderful read relevant and necessary.” Kat François
“Antonia Jade King is here to take up space. Any suggestion that these are the poems of an ant—a small brown thing—should be put, and left, in the bin. These are poems of power and growth. Poems which name not only themselves, but also the women—past and present—on whom this voice leans. In this pamphlet you will find song and laughter, but do not mistake this for carefree joy. This is a perceptive study of survival and understanding.” Gboyega Odubanjo
“Antonia’s poetry should come with a warning: just when you think it’s pleasant, calm and witty verse… blam, that sting, those breath-snatching lines. These fifteen poems do not play around.” Joshua Idehen
Raft / Anne Gill
Anne Gill tells the story of Raft from the edge of a precipice. Standing on the stormy cliff of a heart, she picks out the rocks with perfect vision, with words and their absence, with humour and power. Through the eyes of Penguin 2, she shows us the blindspots of recovery. You will hold your breath as you read. This book is a map and a prescription for healing, essential reading for anyone tunneling their way out of pain.
“We are in need of new ways of raft-making—rafts through the waves and currents of inherited trauma, local and global violence, storms of the self. Something that can deliver a reader to small, if temporary, solaces beyond external harms. In Raft, Gill has crafted poems that can ride the storm. She leaps through surreal scenes that pivot the navigations of the self, net the pain and allow us to laugh between the gulps of wind knocked out of us. Poems of tumbling yet sharp diverting thoughts, there is a wilderness to the writing that marks Gill as both a poet of instinctive and attentive craft.” Antosh Wojcik
“You know when you read poetry and on the first reading you don’t quite understand what you’ve just read, but something is unlocked in your subconscious? Like a good trip. First you smile. Then you cry. You sit up straight. You feel held. The world is still. This collection tackles trauma without reservation, without apology, with care and sensitivity, with authenticity and courage. A striking new collection with timely relevance.” Nafeesa Hamid