Bloodaxe Books

07/09/2026

Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee Roshni Gallagher's first full-length collection Even the Trees is featured as the Scottish Book Trust's Book of the Month for September, accompanied by a Q&A interview. Five copies of Even the Trees are being offered in a prize draw (closing date 30 September).
https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-of-the-month/book-of-the-month-adults/

Even the Trees is out this month from Bloodaxe. It is on the shortlist for the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection 2026, one of the Forward Prizes for Poetry, and is a joint winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024. For links to Roshni's Forward Prize interview and a BooksfromScotland.com poem feature, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1631

05/09/2026

‘The forced migrations and enslavement of colonialism create a latticework of place across the collection, which is Burnley’s primary structuring principle. [...] There’s much to admire here.' – Oluwaseun Olayiwola, The Guardian (Poetry Books of the Month), on Clementine Ewokolo Burnley's first full collection Belling the Leopard, joint winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024 and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In print in The Guardian's Saturday magazine today, 5 September.

Clementine will be launching Belling the Leopard at The Portobello Bookshop in Edinburgh on 24 September, and online with Bloodaxe on Tuesday 29th, both at 7pm. She'll be taking part in a Writers Mosaic event at Wigtown Book Festival on 26 September, 12pm. For details of her upcoming events at Berwick Literary Festival and Newcastlepoetryfestival in October, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/events?articleid=1634

Fetch by Colin Bramwell; Girling by Eve Esfandiari-Denney; The Dead One, The Unconscious One, Thundering in Your Ear, Thriving Slumber by Jay Gao; Belling the Leopard by Clementine Ewokolo Burnley; The Matter by Padraig Regan

03/09/2026

An excellent in-depth piece by Mark Ford on the life and work of the late Rosemary Tonks was featured in The New York Review of Books of 23 July. Bloodaxe Books was the first to republish Tonks' work in 2014 with the publication of Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems & Selected Prose, edited by Neil Astley. Bedouin of the London Evening is distributed in the US by Consortium Book Sales.

For press, radio and podcast features about Rosemary Tonks and her extraordinary life history, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1102

Rosemary Tonks emulated French Symbolist poets before converting to Christianity and renouncing all her own works.

03/09/2026

Marjorie Lotfi explores the relationship between poetry, exile, the refugee experience and political resistance in a piece for The Scotsman ahead of her events at Wigtown Book Festival later this month. The article will be featured in Saturday's print edition and is online now. It includes poems from her Forward Prizes for Poetry-winning debut collection The Wrong Person to Ask, and one from her forthcoming second collection No Known God, out in May.

Marjorie will read alongside Colin Grant and fellow Bloodaxe poet Clementine Ewokolo Burnley at the Writers Mosaic event at Wigtown Book Festival on 26 September, and at the Iranian Women's Voices event on the 27th. Full details below.
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/events?articleid=1290

Marjorie Lotfi’s family fled Iran with one suitcase and an hour’s notice during the Iranian Revolution. A prize-winning poet, she is involved with three events at this year’s Wigtown Book Festival. Here she explores the relationship between poetry, exile, the refugee experience and political r...

27/08/2026

A wide-ranging conversation between poet and dancer Tishani Doshi and Royal Literary Fund Bridge Fellow Dr Vayu Naidu featured on the Writers Mosaic podcast. Tishani read and introduced poems from across her five collections, as well as discussing the dance pieces she devised for two of her books.

For links to reviews of Tishani Doshi's Forward Prizes for Poetry-shortlisted fifth collection Egrets, While War and a short video extract of the dance performance she created for this book, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1615

Tishani Doshi talks to Vayu Naidu about the round-the-world adventures her poetry has taken her on.

27/08/2026

'...a deeply engaging, frankly beautiful read.' - Fiona Sampson, The Tablet, on Tishani Doshi's Forward Prizes for Poetry-shortlisted fifth collection Egrets, While War.
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/books/aglow/

For links to in-depth interviews with Tishani Doshi on the Writers Mosaic and Verve Poetry & Spoken Word Festival podcasts, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1615

25/08/2026

Another chance to hear the June 2025 edition of BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please with Pascale Petit as guest poet. Poems by fellow Bloodaxe poets Niall Campbell and Moniza Alvi featured among Pascale's choices, with Niall recording a poem from his third collection The Island in the Sound especially for the programme. Pascale read from her latest collection Beast. The rebroadcast is available until 19 September.

For reviews, poems features and interviews with Pascale Petit about her ninth collection Beast, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1523

Roger McGough talks to French British poet Pascale Petit.

25/08/2026

Wonderful reviews of Frank Ormsby's eighth collection The Tumbling Paddy and of Lily Blacksell's debut Life Immediately - 'a true original, fizzing with quotable lines' - featured in Martina Evans' round-up of new poetry in The Irish Times of 22 August. Available online by subscription.

To hear Frank Ormsby reading poems from The Tumbling Paddy, and for a link to an interview in the Belfast Telegraph, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1626

Plus collections by Nessa O’Mahony, Lily Blacksell and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch reviewed

14/08/2026

August news & events from Bloodaxe: https://mailchi.mp/f0c516411ee2/august-news-events-from-bloodaxe-10140456

Tishani Doshi & Roshni Gallagher shortlisted for Forward Prizes
Cathy Galvin shortlisted for Laurel Prize
Bloodaxe at Poetry in Aldeburgh
Excellent reviews for Jennifer Lee Tsai and Rita Ann Higgins
Gillian Allnutt profiled in Mslexia
Niall Campbell on The Glimpse podcast
Clare Shaw & Ruth Fainlight on The Writing Life of Sylvia Plath
Kris Johnson receives Charlotte Aitken Trust Award for Poetry
Rebecca Perry wins the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

14/08/2026

Wonderful to see Cathy Galvin's first full-length book of poetry, Ethnology: a love song for Connemara, on the shortlist for the 2026 Laurel Prize!

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1636

The Laurel Prize is an annual nature and ecopoetry prize. It is funded by Simon Armitage’s Laureate’s honorarium, which he receives annually from the King, and is run by the Poetry School. It is awarded to what the judges consider the best collection of environmental or nature poetry published in the past year.

The Judges for 2026 are poets David Morley (Chair) and Imtiaz Dharker, and environmentalist Bethan Laughlin. The winner will be announced at The Laurel Prize Ceremony, which is being held on Friday 25 September, 7pm, at the BBC Philharmonic Studio, MediaCity, Salford, as part of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival 2026.

Ethnology: a love song for Connemara is a book-length reclamation of Cathy Galvin’s Irish speaking Connemara ancestors who lived in the Carna area and on Mason Island (now uninhabited, 50 miles west of Galway), as well as a journey of personal mourning. The ruined cottage she inherited on the island was built by her great-grandfather for his family after the Great Famine. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language, creating a bridge between our own times and a Connemara community on the margins of Europe. Drawing on classic forms within literary and oral traditions, Ethnology becomes a love song for Connemara, witness to vivid encounters: between the living and the dead and between the poets, folklorists and ethnologists who have written about the West of Ireland for their own agendas.

More details of this year's Laurel Prize shortlist on our website.