Join us as we celebrate the launch of two new and truly unique debut poetry collections, Sarah Barnsley’s The Thoughts , and Helen Seymour’s The Underlook. Selected and edited by Gboyega Odubanjo (winner of the 2021 Eric Gregory and Michael Marks Pamphlet Awards) and Suzannah Evans, these collections complement each other through their astute articulations of the “understory”: marginalised or overlooked narratives linked to medical spaces and illness (both mental and physical, from therapeutic spaces to hospitals) whilst retaining a darkly humorous and playful edge. You can find out more and buy the books here.

This launch is free to watch on YouTube. Signing up to this eventrbite listing is a way to register your interest, and will entitle you to a discount code for both books for just £20 plus free postage within the UK when you purchase from The Poetry Business' bookshop.

Click here to watch the launch.

An assured and inventive debut, The Thoughts explores different manifestations of intrusive thoughts as part of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) before navigating through the twists and turns of recovery and love. These poems inhabit therapists’ treatment rooms, waiting rooms, and everyday documents, appearing in such varied forms as emails, research proposals and kids’ puzzles. Compassionate and at times painfully humorous, The Thoughts is an act of advocacy, giving voice to critically underrepresented experiences of illness through poems that are as peculiar and creative as they are arresting.

The Underlook balances precariously between the real and the surreal. Informed by experiences of physical disability, surgery, and medical trauma, this collection articulates a life lived under the bed, at the bottom of a well, in the glances exchanged between doctors. The poems revel in the uncanny and in the power of ignored or repressed spaces, summoning us under to ‘listen … crouch down … press [a] hand against the white gloss shuddering’.

The Poets:

Sarah Barnsley grew up in the Midlands where her dad was a firefighter. A winner in the Poetry Society Members’ Poems Competition (2021, 2018), her work has appeared widely in magazines including Poetry Wales, The Rialto and The White Review. Other publications include a pamphlet, The Fire Station (Telltale Press, 2015), co-editorship of Truths: A Telltale Press Anthology (2018), and literary criticism. Sarah is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London and lives in Hove.

Helen Seymour is a disabled writer and performer. She won gold in the Creative Futures Literary Awards (2017), was longlisted for the Outspoken Poetry Prize (2018), and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Poetry Fellowship (2019). She is published in The Emma Press Anthology of Illness (2020) and is frequently commissioned by such organisations as Apples and Snakes and DadaFest. Helen has written and performed two spoken word theatre shows, directed by Hannah Silva: To Helen Back toured nationally, exploring sickness, health and what it really means to recover; Helen Highwater focused on dating, disability and intrusive thoughts and premiered as part of London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre in 2019.

Accessibility:

This event will use live auto-captioning. As the event is live-streamed, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of these captions. Correct closed-captions will be added to the Youtube video once the livestream is saved and re-uploaded. We will also provide a link to a Google document with poem text.

Please do get in touch with us via email (office@poetrybusiness.co.uk) if you have any concerns or queries about the accessibility of this event.