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Granta has signed two new poetry collections by Will Harris and Dawn Watson for its 2023 poetry list.
Rachael Allen, editor of the Granta Poetry imprint, acquired world English rights for Harris’ second collection Brother Poem, following his Forward Prize-winning and T S Eliot Prize-shortlisted Rendang, and world rights for Northern Irish poet Watson’s debut We Play Here.
Brother Poem was acquired from Niki Chang at David Higham Associates, and We Play Here from Philippa Sitters at David Godwin Associates.
"Will Harris’s second collection is a playful text on the fictions we present of ourselves, and how we live up and into our various personas," Allen said. "Brother Poem harnesses Harris’ exceptional lyric experimentations in feedback loops, anxiety dreams and ludic conventions. Dawn Watson’s We Play Here is an extraordinary affirmation of a new and necessary voice in contemporary Northern Irish poetry. This verse novel told through the worlds of four friends in late 80s Belfast is a stunning look at gender and childhood, capturing, with a rare intimacy, working-class lives against a backdrop of tumult."
Harris is a London-based writer. His debut collection Rendang was published by Granta Poetry in the UK and Wesleyan Press in the US. Watson is a poetry PhD candidate at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University.