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Bloodaxe Books BLOODAXE BOOKS: Making as wide a selection of poetry available to as wide a readership as possible

The late Fleur Adcock's 2010 Bloodaxe collection Dragon Talk was featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read on 14 July, chose...
14/07/2025

The late Fleur Adcock's 2010 Bloodaxe collection Dragon Talk was featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read on 14 July, chosen by host Harriett Gilbert. Dragon Talk was discussed from 18:54, and was also enjoyed by Harriett's guests Desiree Akhavan and Rosie Wilby.

All the poems from the collection are included in Fleur Adcock's 2024 Collected Poems, but Dragon Talk remains available as a separate edition. More on both books below.
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1537

The film-maker and the comedian propose favourite books.

'This anthology gives us the world, the condition of being human and living through whatever we have to live through to ...
10/07/2025

'This anthology gives us the world, the condition of being human and living through whatever we have to live through to get by. Or not. It gives us duende and magic.' - Amanda Thru the Looking Glass, on Rachael Boast's new anthology Versus Versus. A wonderful in-depth Substack review by Canadian writer Amanda Earl.

Versus Versus was published in the UK & Ireland in May by Bloodaxe, and is distributed in North America by Consortium Book Sales from 22 July. For a video of Bloodaxe's online reading and discussion event, including films with poets included in the anthology, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/events?articleid=1500

Edited by Rachael Boast (Bloodaxe Books, 2025)

‘The imagery has a lineage of Plath’s intensity meets Hughes bestiary, with an emotional narrative all Petit’s own. This...
03/07/2025

‘The imagery has a lineage of Plath’s intensity meets Hughes bestiary, with an emotional narrative all Petit’s own. This gripping collection from Petit, whose work has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize four times, teams with surprises...’ – Rebecca Morgan Frank, Literary Hub (Seven Poetry Collections to Read in July), on Pascale Petit's ninth collection Beast.

Beast was published in the UK & Ireland by Bloodaxe in April, and is distributed in the USA by Consortium Book Sales. For a link to Pascale Petit's recent BBC Radio 4 appearance as guest poet on Poetry Please, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1523

As I write this introduction, there’s a heatwave and the world is a mess. As we watch the defunding of many of the institutions that help literature get in the hands of readers, that lift up import…

'Vidyan Ravinthiran’s Avidya is a book for travellers. The poet takes us from the England of his birth, to the Sri Lanka...
30/06/2025

'Vidyan Ravinthiran’s Avidya is a book for travellers. The poet takes us from the England of his birth, to the Sri Lanka of his Tamil parents, to the US, where he works at Harvard. […] In dialogue here not just with his Sri Lankan heritage, but with Keats, Marvell, Seamus Heaney and Walter de la Mare, Ravinthiran deserves more recognition as one of our most musical and memorable poets.' – Graeme Richardson, The Sunday Times (Summer Poetry Round-up). In print on 29 June, and available online by subscription.

For more reviews of Vidyan Ravinthiran's third collection Avidyā, and for a video of his online launch event, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1536

Our resident poetry expert recommends four collections to enjoy this summer, from a nature anthology to Fiona Benson’s witchy verse

'a poet whose extraordinary and elegant work is deeply placed within the North. Lode is a personal journey [...] a landm...
26/06/2025

'a poet whose extraordinary and elegant work is deeply placed within the North. Lode is a personal journey [...] a landmark work full of insight, observation and learning, taking us deep into her unique poetic world.' - Will Mackie, New Writing North, on Gillian Allnutt's tenth collection Lode.

Marratide: Selected Poems (edited by Peter Armstrong & Jake Morris-Campbell by the late William Martin, a 'remarkable and singular poet', is also featured. The books were launched together in Newcastle and Durham in May.

For links to more reviews for Lode, a Guardian poem feature and to last Sunday's edition of BBC Radio 4's The Verb featuring an interview with Gillian Allnutt, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1506

Get ready to indulge in some poetry on a long summer evening. It’s time again for NWN poetry expert Will...

Pascale Petit was Roger McGough’s guest on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please on 24 June. She chose and introduced poems reques...
25/06/2025

Pascale Petit was Roger McGough’s guest on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please on 24 June. She chose and introduced poems requested by listeners, including work by fellow Bloodaxe poets Niall Campbell and Moniza Alvi, and read a poem from her new collection Beast.

For details of the poems featured, plus links to reviews and interviews for Pascale Petit's ninth collection Beast, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1523

Roger McGough talks to French British poet Pascale Petit.

A film portrait of poet and translator George Szirtes has been released to accompany an in-depth interview with him in H...
24/06/2025

A film portrait of poet and translator George Szirtes has been released to accompany an in-depth interview with him in HLO - Hungarian Literature Online (linked to in this article). George was filmed at home in Norwich and in Budapest, and talks about identity, belonging, and the literary path he has traced between England and Hungary.

George Szirtes Poet is the winner of The King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, 2024. For details of the poem he reads extracts from during the film, now included in his New & Collected Poems, and for reviews of his most recent collection, Fresh Out of the Sky, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=524

Literature comes home. At Litera, this is the title we give our portrait films in which we visit the hometown of a writer who is important to us. This time, our author was born in Hungary but raised in England. So we travelled all the way to Norwich to find out who the poet is who was honoured by th...

Poet Gillian Allnutt was a guest on BBC Radio 4's The Verb yesterday, 22 June. Gillian was talking to host Ian McMillan...
23/06/2025

Poet Gillian Allnutt was a guest on BBC Radio 4's The Verb yesterday, 22 June. Gillian was talking to host Ian McMillan about her new collection Lode. She read and introduced several poems from the book (from 22:45).

For details of the poems discussed, and for links to reviews and to Carol Rumens' Poem of the Week feature in The Guardian, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1506

Ian McMillan is joined by Harriet Walter, Jason Singh and Gillian Allnutt.

Gillian Allnutt's poem 'The Song of Arachnid' from her tenth collection Lode is discussed in detail by Carol Rumens in h...
23/06/2025

Gillian Allnutt's poem 'The Song of Arachnid' from her tenth collection Lode is discussed in detail by Carol Rumens in her online Poem of the Week column in The Guardian.

For links to reviews of Lode and to an interview with Gillian Allnutt on yesterday's edition of BBC Radio 4's The Verb, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1506

A generous and warm ecofeminist vision of the labours of motherhood

An interview with Romanian poet Ana Blandiana features in The Tablet of 21 June. Ana met with Anthony Gardner ahead of ...
20/06/2025

An interview with Romanian poet Ana Blandiana features in The Tablet of 21 June. Ana met with Anthony Gardner ahead of the Romanian Cultural Institute in London launch of The Shadow of Words, which brings together of Blandiana’s early collections.

For reviews of The Shadow of Words and to see a video of Bloodaxe's joint online launch event with Ana Blandiana and her translators Paul Scott Derrick and Viorica Patea, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1535

Romania’s pre-eminent living poet was just 17 when her work was banned for the first time. As the daughter of a so-called “enemy of the people”, she knew that

'Monster is not only beautifully crafted and fearless, but necessary.’ – The Saartjie Journal, on Dzifa Afi Benson's deb...
19/06/2025

'Monster is not only beautifully crafted and fearless, but necessary.’ – The Saartjie Journal, on Dzifa Afi Benson's debut collection.

Four poems from Monster are also featured in The Saartjie Journal. For details, see:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1452

Monster’s Cover Art by Leila Fanner “A Hiding Place You Carry With You In Plain Sight”: Dzifa Benson’s Monster and the Paradox of the Black Woman’s Body “How easy it is to construct a living wonder you can trip from awe to ridicule and back to awe again.”—Dzifa Benson, “Freak Sonne...

Rita Ann Higgins has a new retrospective out from Bloodaxe in March 2026, Jiving with Wasps: New & Selected Poems [https...
15/06/2025

Rita Ann Higgins has a new retrospective out from Bloodaxe in March 2026, Jiving with Wasps: New & Selected Poems [https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/jiving-with-wasps-1393]. Spring 2026 festival organisers please note. Here she reads a dozen poems from the book, all taken from her later collections: https://vimeo.com/1093469373

Rita Ann Higgins is a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of Irish lives and foibles who writes provocative and heart-warming poems of high jinx, jittery grief and telling…

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About Bloodaxe Books

Bloodaxe Books has revolutionised poetry publishing in Britain over four decades. Internationally renowned for quality in literature and excellence in book design, our authors and books have won virtually every major literary award given to poetry, from the T.S. Eliot Prize and Pulitzer to the Nobel Prize. And books like the Staying Alive series have broken new ground by opening up contemporary poetry to many thousands of new readers.

Grant support from Arts Council England makes it possible for Bloodaxe to publish around thirty new titles a year, and to sell more poetry books than any other subsidised publisher in Britain.