Nine Arches unveils 2023 list including five débuts

Nine Arches Press is to publish a poetry list featuring themes of climate change, grief and queer perspectives next year, as it celebrates its continued Arts Council England National Portfolio funding.

The 2023 offering will feature 12 titles, including five début collections, new poetry books by acclaimed authors and a new poetry handbook edited by Deborah Alma.

Kicking off the new year will be After All We Have Travelled, by Primers mentoring scheme finalist and Ledbury poetry critic Sarala Estruch, a “distinctive journey across time, continents and cultures, through memory and generations of family history, exploring the long legacies of empire and its personal and political effects”. Following this will be More Than Weeds, by L Kiew, which explores the language of migration, drawing on botanical and ecological detail in a study of borders, belonging, place and people. 

March 2023 brings publication of White Ghosts, the poetry début by novelist and author of My Name is Monster Katie Hale, billed as a collection of “unflinching” poems tracing maternal lines and difficult legacies of slavery and whiteness.

Early summer will bring new poetry collections from Forward Prize 2022 judge Rishi Dastidar, who publishes Neptune’s Projects in May, while Isobel Dixon will publish A Whistling of Birds, her fourth collection with Nine Arches.

Poet and playwright James McDermott will release his new collection of poems, Wild Life, in June, exploring the nature of queerness, queerness of nature and queerness of ‘natural’ masculinity.

In July, the press will publish a fifth collection by T S Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Jacqueline Saphra. “Velvl’s Violin shifts between past and present, revealing stories, missing histories, collective and inherited traumas from the Jewish diaspora: a warning to a world where hatred is on the rise and the legacy of the Holocaust echoes current narratives of displacement and migration,” the publisher says.

Poets David Clarke and Ian Humphreys will also return with new collections, both of which address nature and grief in distinctive ways. Clarke, winner of the Michael Marks Award, publishes Out of True, his third collection with the press in August, while Humphreys releases Tormentil in September, a work exploring connections of family, food and community and place.

October will see two further début poetry collections, Greekling and Frieze, from poets Kostya Tsolakis and Olga Dermott-Bond. Both were recently Featured Poets for the BBC Contains Strong Language festivals in 2021 and 2022.

November will bring Poetry to Make and Do – a “how to” handbook of prompts designed to help poets find ways to write, perform and collaborate on poetry, edited by Alma.

The press achieved Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status in 2018 and has just been successful in applying again for the 2023-26 NPO funding programme. As well as publishing, it runs mentoring schemes, poetry workshops and live and online events, and was a co-director, with Writing West Midlands and BBC Arts, of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival in Coventry in 2021, and the SkyLines Festival of Poetry & Spoken Word in 2022.

Jane Commane, editor and director, commented: “Since 2016 we’ve put more than 30,000 new books of poetry into the hands of readers in the UK and beyond, and published 124 titles since 2008. We are excited to announce our 2023 list of thought-provoking and innovative poetry books, and thrilled to have the continued support and investment in our activity by Arts Council England through National Portfolio Organisation funding 2023-26. We are proud to be an NPO and committed to ensuring more people have access to adventures in poetry whether on the page, online, or on stage.”

Peter Knott, Midlands area director for Arts Council England said: "Nine Arches Press plays an important role in England’s literary scene by publishing contemporary poetry and showcasing new writers to audiences across the region. We’re delighted to be investing in their work for the next three years and it’ll be great to see them continue to support emerging artists and get people of all ages inspired by the written word.”