Wrecking Ball Press

Shirley May’s She Wrote Her Own Eulogy takes the reader on a journey, the landscape of Kent and Manchester brought to vibrancy via Jamaica. It is a twisting road, the displaced lives making new communities on strange soil, the stories kept and told and shared. It is wisdom, it is memory, and it is future and hope.

Dean Wilson: Hull’s fourth best and Withernsea’s second best poet, daily collector of pebbles and an enigma wrapped in rhyme. Since his relocation to a cliff-edge residence, Dean’s creative juices have been flowing faster than the Humber into the North Sea and, inspired by his Holderness surroundings, he’s been writing furiously. Take Me Up The Lighthouse is the result. Open up and enter the wonderful world of Mr Wilson.

“Some of his stuff is a bit ropey but some of it is great.” – The Scotsman

The Hail Mary pass is an American football term. It is used when a ball is thrown blind in the vague hope a receiver will make the catch and deliver a last minute victory.

‘Fiona Curran is a bright and fiesty northern voice. She treads the landscape of the urban and the domestic, from the smokey fug of the betting shop to the lavendar scent of the bathroom. I like Fiona’s poems because she writes about real people who truly exist and whose lives and wine-fuelled loves I can believe in. I just love this. “The Hail Mary Pass,” is spunky, sexy and brash. This is a belter of a debut and I very very much look forward to the next verse.’ – Wilton Carhoot; Editor of The Slab.

Matthew Caley’s debut Thirst [1999] was nominated for ‘The Forward Prize For Best First Collection’ and much acclaimed: “shaped and honed to a mosaic brilliance” – Ken Smith.

‘Stunning invention and remarkable versatility’ – Sophie Hannah.

“Thirst is a joy -comic, witty, even touchingly poignant” – Time Out.

This second collection ‘The Scene Of My Former Triumph‘ extends his patrol across the liminal borders between urban myth and the myth of pastoral escape.

Barring Geoff Hattersley, you’d think most contemporary poets have never done a proper days work in their life. For me this poetic vacuum, this space walked around or avoided, leaves me unable sometimes to link myself to poetry and poets. We all work don’t we? So in, You’re So Vain You Probably Think This Book Is About You (YSVYPTTBIAY), I wanted to address this balance, to tackle work, the toad as Larkin called it, to show the vicissitudes of the work place, how employment shapes us and what it does to us. In doing this I use a sometime working class hero Crusoe whose mix of fecklessness and bad luck acts as a conduit for my own socio-political brand of Hulldonian existentialism. Either that or I just chew the fat about the workaday.

As the author, it would be completely wrong of me to tell you the subtext or underlying themes of this book, which are of course a virulent and rational hatred of Margaret Thatcher and a new blast in the re-emerging class war. So since my last book Cowboy Hat, I’ve pulled together all the poems about the toad and here they are. It’s not all work though, I can be found smashing up my old sofa in the kitchen, or telling you about Badger the Cadger, the slotterhodge blagging a free meal, or me being tied to Animal on a three legged pub crawl, or Renwick the serial chorer. Mostly it is work. You’re So Vain You Probably Think This Book Is About You, is a tribute to Bobby the TWOCKER, Ox the toilet door kettle balancing nutcase and the motley gang of wonderful workmates and workbanes I’ve had the fortune to work with. For me, a poetry book should be like a good night out with your mates, when you’re wearing a new snazzy shirt. It encompasses storytelling, drama, emotion, courage, humour and ultimately belief and spirit. Work will never diminish my spirit and my faith will remain strong. So here I come with my Northern Heart on one sleeve and my Yorkshire Soul on the other. I’ve bared my heart in this book to give you these poems. Now it’s your turn reader, chuffing eck, buy the book.