Shortlisted for the Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections, “Water that sings/ through
blood and brain” permeates the mesmerizing series of contemplative poems in Sarah Hymas’s melt.
The judges praised the book as ‘A triumph of imagery interweave, human and sea, these moving
poems employ lush, melodious language, rhythmic pacing, a hypnotic sense of attentive presence.’
Sarah Hymas is a writer of poetry, short fiction, essays, artistbooks, site specific walks and not so
easily definable work. Jason Allen-Paisant’s Thinking with Trees is a radical response to the pastoral
and walking traditions, in woods where dogs are welcomed but black men are suspect. ‘In these
quietly subversive lyrics, expectations are undone, of ecologies, of people, of poems: trees, dogs,
thoughts, cells, the daily world here is rendered wholly new (Rachael Allen). Allen-Paisant is from a
village called Coffee Grove in Manchester, Jamaica. At present, he’s a lecturer in Caribbean Poetry & Decolonial Thought in the School of English at the University of Leeds.
Tickets: £10.00 standard and on Zoom
Hosted by Ledbury Critic Mantra Mukim
Live streamed on Zoom