Picador acquires Them! from Arthur C Clarke winner Giles

Picador has acquired Them! from Harry Josephine Giles.

Colette Bryce, poetry editor, acquired world English language rights from Caro Clarke at Portobello Literary, and Picador will publish the book in June 2024. Them! Is described as “an innovative collection of poems about trans life in the UK today, through the lenses of work, technology and ecology”.

The book follows Giles’s genre-defying verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia (2021), the first-ever poetry winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year. A writer and performer from Orkney and living in Edinburgh, Giles’ collection Tonguit (2015) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and The Games (2018) for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and Saltire Prize for Best Collection.

Giles said: “I set about writing Them! to work out how to speak in conditions of hostility and fear, to find a way for trans life to sing, shout and strike in the cracks of what’s possible. Poetry’s the best way I know to magic the rage I feel into something more alive, and to offer that spark to others.”

Bryce added: “Them! is a departure for Harry Josephine Giles and an exuberant follow-up to the extraordinary novel-in-verse Deep Wheel Orcadia. The poems confront a subject discussed by many and understood by few.

“Giles’s visual poetics make for a dynamic reading experience. Them! is a timely poetic intervention from one of this generation’s most necessary poets.”