Eighty Four

Poems on Male Suicide, Vulnerability, Grief & Hope.

Helen Calcutt

• Publisher: Verve Poetry Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912565139
• eBook ISBN: 9781912565795
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Eighty Four is a new anthology of poetry on the subject of male suicide in aid of CALM (campaign against living miserably). Poems have been donated to the collection by Andrew McMillan, Salena Godden, Anthony Anaxogorou, Katrina Naomi, Ian Patterson, Carrie Etter, Peter Raynard and Joelle Taylor while a submissions window yielded many excellent poems on the subject from both known and hitherto unknown poets we are thrilled to have been made aware of.
Curated by poet Helen Calcutt, Eighty-Four showcases human vulnerability in all its forms. From the baby in the bath who knows daddy is gone, to the woman whose father haunts her through the window, here is a diverse collection of voices, delicately speaking the intense difficulties of the human predicament, courageously engaging with the profound impact that male suicide is having on all of us. There's a glittering strength to this volume, because of the honesty from which its poems have been created, giving this book the truth it was seeking.
We hope to shed light on an issue that is cast in shadow, and often shrouded in secrecy and denial. If we don't talk, we don't heal, and we don't change. In Eighty Four, we are talking. Are you listening?

OUR CONTRIBUTORS (THANK-YOU!)

Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot award-winning poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He has published nine volumes of poetry, a spoken-word EP and a collection of short stories. He has won multiple awards, most recently being shortlisted for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. He is founder of Out-Spoken, spoken word night and press.

Romalyn Ante grew up in the Philippines and moved to the UK in 2005. She is the winner of Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 and joint-winner of the Manchester Writing Competition 2017. She also received Platinum Poetry Award from Creative Future Literary Award 2017, and her debut pamphlet, Rice & Rain (V.Press), received the 2018 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet.

Casey Bailey is a writer, poet, spoken word performer, rapper and secondary school senior leader, born and raised in Nechells, Birmingham. Casey released the short poetry collection Waiting At Bloomsbury Park with Big White Shed in 2017, and his debut full collection Adjusted with Verve Poetry Press. He finished in the top 4 of the BBC Edinburgh Fringe Slam 2018.

Abi Budgen is a musician, illustrator and until recently, a closet poet. Her poem Evening Prayer is dedicated to the loving memory of Val Long and Chris Long.

Lewis Buxton is a poet & and arts producer. In 2018, Lewis was the recipient of the 2018 UEA Literary Festival Bursary for Creative Writing and he won The Poetry School & Nine Arches Press, Primers Competition Volume Four. He has performed across the country and teaches creative writing. His first pamphlet Weight is forthcoming. He currently lives in Norwich.

David Calcutt is a playwright, poet and novelist. He has written original plays and adaptations for theatre and BBC radio, and a number of his theatre scripts are published by Oxford University Press. He has written four collections of poetry, the latest being The Last of the Light is not the Last of the Light, published by Fair Acre Press, and four novels, published by Ocford and Barefoot Books. He is Associate Artist with Midlands Actors Theatre and company writer for Regional Voice Theatre.

Louisa Campbell has been both psychiatric nurse and patient, and now turns these experiences into poems. She has two pamphlets published: The Happy Bus, (2017, Picaroon Poetry), and The Ward, (2018, Paper Swans Press). She lives in Kent.

Diana Cant is a child psychotherapist and poet, who has spent all her professional life working with young people in various sorts of distress. One of the aims of her poetry is to give these young people a voice that is seldom heard. She lives and works in Kent, and has been published in various anthologies and journals.

Gary Carr has been involved with poetry for more than twenty years and has had more than fifty poems published in anthologies and literary magazines including Voices of 1919, Under the Radar and The Interpreter’s House. He runs Spoken Worlds open mic night and Runaway Writers’ Group in Burton-on-Trent. More of his poetry can be seen at gary-carr.me.uk.

Stewart Carswell is from the Forest of Dean, and currently lives in Cambridgeshire. He studied Physics at Southampton University, and has a PhD from the University of Bristol. His poems have recently been published in Envoi, The Poetry Shed, and Ink Sweat & Tears. His debut pamphlet is Knots and branches (Eyewear, 2016). http://stewartcarswell. wordpress.com Twitter: @stewcarswell

Gram Joel Davies lives in Devon. His debut Bolt Down This Earth (V. Press 2017) was described by The Poetry Book Society as “a striking collection, full of vitality and enjoyment of the poetic craft.” His poetry has lately been published in Poetry Wales, Until the Stars Burn Out and as weekly poem at Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre. Find him online at https://gramjoeldavies.uk/

Michelle Diaz has been widely published in both print and online. She won the 2018 Christabel Hopesmith NHS Poetry Competition. She lives in the strange town of Glastonbury with her son who has Tourette Syndrome. Her debut pamphlet The Dancing Boy is due out in February 2019 with Against the Grain Press.

Glyn Edwards has been a Guest Editor of The Lonely Crowd and will publish his first collection of poetry with The Lonely Press in early 2018. He is a trustee of The Terry Hetherington Prize and is co-editor of the Partian-published Cheval Anthology. He is a MA pupil at MMU and teaches in North Wales.

American expatriate Carrie Etter has published four collections of poetry, most recently The Weather in Normal (UK: Seren, US: Station Hill, 2018), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

RM Francis is author of three chapbooks, Transitions (Black Light Engine Room, 2015), Orpheus (Lapwing Publications, 2016) and Corvus’ Burnt-Wing Love Balm and Cure-All (Black Light Engine Room, 2018). He completed his PhD at the University of Wolverhampton. Original Plus are publishing his fourth pamphlet in 2019. His full collection is due in 2020 with Smokestack Books.

Alam Girling writes poetry, sometimes fiction, plays, etc. in Richmond, British Columbia, He has been published in such venues as Panoply, Blue Skies, FreeFall, Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly and The MacGuffin. His work has placed in three poetry contests, been displayed in shop windows and read or heard by hundreds.

Salena Godden is author of poetry collections Under The Pier (Nasty Little Press) and Fishing in the Aftermath: Poems 1994-2014 (Burning Eye); literary childhood memoir Springfield Road (Ubound) and Shade published in the award-winning anthology The Good Immigrant (Unbound). Her live poetry album LIVEwire was released in 2017 with indie spoken word label Nymphs and Thugs and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. Pessimism Is For Lightweights - 13 pieces of courage and resistance’ was published in the summer of 2018 by Rough Trade Books. The title poem Pessimism is for Lightweights is currently a pubic poetry art piece displayed at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol. A BBC documentary following 12 months of her latest work-in-progress Mrs Death Misses Death was broadcast in December 2018 - This will be a debut fiction with soundtrack, exploring Death as a woman and themes of life and death, loss and love.

Emily Harrison is a young short fiction and poetry writer from North Yorkshire, Emily has recently discovered that she actually likes writing, despite everything she may have previously said. She can be found procrastinating on Twitter @emily__harrison. sadness is a room is her third poem to go to print, and the most personal poem she has penned to date.

John Hawkhead is a writer and illustrator from the South West of England. His book of haiku and senryu Small Shadows is available from Alba Publishing. His twitter account is @HawkheadJohn.

Martin Hayes was born and has lived around the Edgware Road area of London all of his life. He has worked in the courier industry for over 30 years and is the author of four books of poetry: Letting Loose The Hounds, (Redbeck Press, 2001). When We Were Almost Like Men, (Smokestack, 2015). The Things Our Hands Once Stood For, (Culture Matters, 2018) and Roar! (Smokestack, 2018).

Alastair Hesp is a poet from Yorkshire, England. He was recently shortlisted for the Indigo Dreams first-pamphlet award and his poetry has appeared in literary journals such as The Canons Mouth and The French Literary Review. His poetry concerns a tense, paradoxical, violent love of a life in common.

Shaun Hill is a Nine Arches Press mentee, and will exhibiting at UK Young...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Slipknot
• Hide All the Knives
• Gaining Trust
• Impromptu
• That’s Enough
• The blood of Christ
• 43rd Birthday
• Book of The Dead
• Deciding
• The decision room
• Match Over
• Hollow Ponds
• I should’ve said something
• Last Words
• These boys
• Red Road Flats
• Multiple Choice
• What About It?
• my name is failure
• The Hunting Party
• my sister says
• Friends Who Decided to Leave in Their Sequence of Leaving
• One Bird
• An incident with a train
• sadness is a room
• Mouth Organ
• Now my brother has died
• Wolf Blood
• Boxes
• An Evening With Lights
• Rise
• Body Balance
• A Boy Stands
• Son
• Inscription
• Sitting Under a Pine Tree
• Ghost Wave
• face
• Time To Check In
• Just an acquaintance
• Eleven Men
• Lazarus
• Oiling Brakes
• Seven Senryu in Memory of Brian Karr Harter (1969-1987)
• Rosemary
• Bath time memories
• An Improper Kindness
• The Ekphrasis of Self-annihilation
• A Single Atom in an Ion Trap
• what might live on the other side of the moon
• hold me warm blooded thing
• In Which I Compose the Note but Then Talk Myself into Living
• Evening Prayer
• A Dream
• Listen to this
• Our Contributors (Thank-You!)
• About the Poems