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Carcanet Press

@carcanet.bsky.social

Award-winning publisher of modern, classic and translated poetry, and the bi-monthly literary journal @pnreview.bsky.social. 🔗 https://linktr.ee/CarcanetPress

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Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 13h ago

Congratulations to Sarah Leavesley, whose poem 'Distillation, in snatches' was chosen as the winner of our #WeltonWalk Competition!🎉 You can read Sarah's winning poem over on our Substack (linked in bio). Well done Sarah!⭐

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · yesterday

Say hello to our August titles!🦚 Get 15% off with code AUGBOOKS15 until the end of the month. 🌀Jay Gao - The Dead One, The Unconscious One, Thundering in Your Ear, Thriving Slumber: www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017532... 🐶My Father The Dog - Andrew Fitzsimons: www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017574...

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 6d ago

Happy Publication Day to PN Review 290! Read Michael Schmidt's Editorial:⬇️ open.substack.com/pub/pnreview...

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 6d ago

Happy publication day to 101 Letters by Christopher Middleton, edited by John Clegg!🌄 Get 15% off when you use the code JULYBOOKS15: www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017567... 📖: This selection of Middleton’s letters offers a new beginning point for readers of this dazzling, many-talented writer.

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · last wk.

This week, read an excerpt from the prologue of Anthony V. Capildeo's new selection of essays, Masqueraders: open.substack.com/pub/carcanet...

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 2w ago

This month we're publishing Masqueraders by Anthony V. Capildeo!🔮 Get 15% offwhen you use the code JULYBOOKS15: www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017569... 📖: In Masqueraders, poet Capildeo's non-fiction début treats us to a selection from over a dozen years of scintillating essays, letters and columns.

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 2w ago

This month we're publishing Pier 52 by Jane Duran!🌊 Get 15% off your copy when you use the code JULYBOOKS15: www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017592... 📖: Jane Duran’s Pier 52 makes new spaces for its readers to think, whether revisiting 1970s Manhattan or noticing the closed spaces of Palestine now.

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 2w ago

Congratulations to Bei Dao and Jeffrey Yang, who has been shortlisted for the 2026 Sarah Maguire Prize For Poetry in Translation 2026 with their collection Sidetracks!⭐ Well done to Bei, Jeffrey, and all the other shortlistees!🎉 www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017427...

Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP)@clmporg.bsky.social · 2w ago

This summer be sure to read HEIRLOOM by Catherine-Esther Cowie, a finalist for the 2026 #FirecrackerAward in Poetry! #SummerReading @carcanet.bsky.social www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017479...

HEIRLOOM

Catherine-Esther Cowie

carcanet.co.uk

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 2w ago

Join us for the online launch of 'Killing Spree' with @jorie.graham! ✨ Tuesday 4th August, 7pm, on Zoom - hosted by Joey Connolly. Tickets are £2 and come with a £2 discount off the book. Get your ticket here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 2w ago

This week, celebrate Elizabeth Jennings' centenary with a Substack from our archive: open.substack.com/pub/carcanet...

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 2w ago

25% off upcoming books with Waterstones ‼️ From now until 23:09 on Friday 24th July, pre-order these Autumn titles with 25% OFF. Includes: The Matter by Padraig Regan Red River Valley by Ian McMillan The Dead One... by Jay Gao My Father the Dog by Andrew Fitzsimons Find the links in bio! 🛒 🔗

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 2w ago

Larks they were in lift-off, swallows in soaring. Soaring metal is flight and nest together… —Edwin Morgan, “A Home in Space” A #poem for astronauts – from CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2020 #OTD, 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon #MoonLandingDay 🚀🧑‍🚀

A Home in Space
Edwin Morgan

Laid-back in orbit, they found their minds.
They found their minds were very clean and clear.
Clear crystals in swarms outside were their fireflies and larks.
Larks they were in lift-off, swallows in soaring.
Soaring metal is flight and nest together.
Together they must hatch.
Hatches let the welders out.
Out went the whitesuit riggers with frames as light as air.
Air was millions under lock and key.
Key-ins had computers wild on Saturday nights.
Nights, days, months, years they lived in space.
Space shone black in their eyes.
Eyes, hands, food-tubes, screens, lenses, keys were one.
One night – or day – or month – or year – they all –
all gathered at the panel and agreed –
agreed to cut communication with –
with the earth base – and it must be said they were –
were cool and clear as they dismantled the station and –
and gave their capsule such power that –
that they launched themselves outwards –
outwards in an impeccable trajectory, that band –
that band of tranquil defiers, not to plant any –
any home with roots but to keep a –
a voyaging generation voyaging, and as far –
as far as there would ever be a home in space –
space that needs time and time that needs life.

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 2w ago

When the badness came he was playing chess again… —Iain Crichton Smith, “The Chess Player” from NEW COLLECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2011 #poem #poetry #chess #WorldChessDay www.carcanet.co.uk/978185754960...

The Chess Player
by Iain Crichton Smith

When the badness came he was playing chess again.
‘Someone most dear to you,’ they said, ‘has died.’
He scouted round the board and picked the queen.
(What use are bishops, knights?) ‘We found,’ they cried,
‘your brother dead. His wounds were in the side.’

‘Not in the head?’ he said, not looking up.
‘In the head and heart as well,’ they answered. He
moved the tall queen delicately as in hope
but the king escaped again. ‘Did he say of me
anything hopeful?’ he asked savagely,

moving a pawn, his head carved to the wood
the king was carved from. ‘No,’ they said. ‘“Please tell
my brother this. Tell him I’ve understood
a very little.” That’s what he told us.’ ‘Well,
the chessboard tells me what of heaven or hell

I need to know and that’s too much,’ he cried,
shifting the queen. (The king escaped again.)
He smiled a little with the jaunty pride
one sometimes notices in desperate men.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘when you came in just then

I had a vision of that very board.
They do not know, you see, none of them knows.
They’re all quite evidently so far apart.
What do they know of each other? I dispose –
but each is wooden, in archaic pose.’

And then they saw (each one standing beside
the terrible trivial wrestler) with a start
that someone most dear to him indeed had died,
and stared at him grappling with his mental art,
and carefully made ready to depart.

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 3w ago

Happy #WorldSnakeDay – 16 July – to all who celebrate. Here’s Edwin Morgan’s “Siesta of a Hungarian Snake”, published in COLLECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 1990 🐍 #poem #poetry #snakes www.carcanet.co.uk/978185754188...

Edwin Morgan
Siesta of a Hungarian Snake

s sz sz SZ sz SZ sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z

Poetry Daily @poetrydaily.bsky.social · 3w ago

Today's Feature: "Nostalgia" by Christine Roseeta Walker from Coco Island published by @carcanet.bsky.social Read here: poems.com/poem/nostalg...

Nostalgia

I’m being given back to you, to the land of my birth, to the childhood of my past

poems.com

Sasha Dugdale @sashadugdale.bsky.social · 3w ago

‘Pitysad’ is from ‘Deformations’ a book about The Odyssey, PTSD, war and abuse @carcanet.bsky.social (it’s featured in Henry Power’s excellent Homer Haunted) @bloomscontinuum.bsky.social

Poem title ‘Pitysad’
I entered a city at night, Penelope
I couldn’t tell whether it was half-built or half-destroyed
I ordered you killed, Penelope
as I felt your hips in my hands
your head under mine
as I stroked your hair
and wondered if you were still alive
I moved through the streets and they were silent
but I kicked down doors
I crouched in stairwells
and I saw you emerge
from blasted places
holding up my old coat
and looking for me
It was a cloudless night
and the stars were tiny holes
in the sky’s blackout
beyond that dark fabric
there’s a lit room
brightly lit
and although I can’t dance, Penelope
we were dancing
I burst into a room
a few women huddled
clutching pomegranates
I thought they were bombs, Penelope
I swear
I thought they were
bombs

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 3w ago

Join Jay Gao on his upcoming tour🌀 Tickets are already on sale for all 3 Edinburgh events - grab yours now: www.carcanet.co.uk/events/

Events Archive - Carcanet Press

Bailey Allen Hall, University of Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland, H91 TK33

carcanet.co.uk

Barb Milne @barbmilne.bsky.social · 3w ago

Thank you @carcanet.bsky.social, contributors, organisers, and readers, for a brilliant evening ‘100 Years of Elizabeth Jennings: A Carcanet Celebration’. Such a terrific outpouring of poems. Particularly taken by ‘Almost’, one of Rebecca Watts’ selections. #ElizabethJennings #poetry

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 3w ago

Cinquevalli in sepia looks at me from an old postcard: bundle of enigmas. Half faun, half military man… —Edwin Morgan, “Cinquevalli” from COLLECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 1990 Paul Cinquevalli (1859–1918) died #OTD, 14 July #poem #poetry #C19 #circus www.carcanet.co.uk/978185754188...

Paul Cinquevalli, by London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company, published by Rotary Photographic Co Ltd. Bromide postcard print, circa 1912. National Portrait Gallery.

A sepia photograph of Paul Cinquevalli (1859–1918). He has short, curly hair and a thick moustache, and is wearing an elaborate acrobat's leotard covered in tassels, braid, and frogging. He has a thick neck and stands half-facing us, his head turned to look directly at the camera. His left arm is cocked on his hip; his left elbow rests against a cannonball which sits on top of a stone plinth beside him.

Cinquevalli
Edwin Morgan

Cinquevalli is falling, falling.
The shining trapeze kicks and flirts free,
solo performer at last.
The sawdust puffs up with a thump,
settles on a tangle of broken limbs.
St Petersburg screams and leans.
His pulse flickers with the gas-jets. He lives.

Cinquevalli has a therapy.
In his hospital bed, in his hospital chair
he holds a ball, lightly, lets it roll round his hand,
or grips it tight, gauging its weight and resistance,
begins to balance it, to feel its life attached to his
by will and knowledge, invisible strings
that only he can see. He throws it
from hand to hand, always different,
always the same, always
different, always the
same.
His muscles learn to think, his arms grow very strong.

Cinquevalli in sepia
looks at me from an old postcard: bundle of enigmas.
Half faun, half military man; almond eyes, curly hair,
conventional moustache; tights, and a tunic loaded
with embroideries, tassels, chains, fringes; hand on hip
with a large signet-ring winking at the camera
but a bull neck and shoulders and a cannon-ball
at his elbow as he stands by the posing pedestal;
half reluctant, half truculent,
half handsome, half absurd,
but let me see you forget him: not to be done.

Cinquevalli is a juggler.
In a thousand theatres, in every continent,
he is the best, the greatest. After eight years perfecting
he can balance one billiard ball on another billiard ball
on top of a cue on top of a third billiard ball
in a wine glass held in his mouth. To those
who say the balls are waxed, or flattened,
he patiently explains the trick will only work
because the spheres are absolutely true.
There is no deception in him. He is true.

Cinquevalli is juggling with a bowler,
a walking-stick, a cigar, a coin.
Who foresees? How to please.
The last time round, the bowler
flies to his head, the stick sticks in his hand,
the cigar jumps into his mouth, the coin
lands on his foot—ah, but
is kicked into his eye
and held there as the miraculous monocle
without which the portrait would be incomplete.

Cinquevalli is practising.
He sits in his dressing-room talking to some friends,
at the same time writing a letter with one hand
and with the other juggling four balls.
His friends think of demons, but
‘You could do all this,’ he says,
sealing the letter with a billiard ball.

Cinquevalli is on the high wire in Odessa.
The roof cracks, he is falling, falling
into the audience, a woman breaks his fall,
he cracks her like a flea, but lives.

Cinquevalli broods in his armchair in Brixton Road.
He reads in the paper about the shells whining
at Passchendaele, imagines the mud and the dead.
He goes to the window and wonders through that dark evening
what is happening in Poland where he was born.
His neighbours call him a German spy.
‘Kestner, Paul Kestner, that’s his name!’
‘Keep Kestner out of the British music-hall!’
He frowns; it is cold; his fingers seem stiff and old.

Cinquevalli tosses a plate of soup
and twirls it on his forefinger; not a drop spills.
He laughs, and well may he laugh
who can do that. The astonished table
breathe again, laugh too, think the world
a spinning thing that spills, for a moment, no drop.

Cinquevalli’s coffin sways through Brixton
only a few months before the Armistice.
Like some trick they cannot get off the ground
it seems to burden the shuffling bearers, all their arms
cross-juggle that displaced person, that man
of balance, of strength, of delights and marvels,
in his unsteady box at last into the earth.

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 3w ago

This week's Substack is by Jane Duran, as she introduces her forthcoming collection Pier 52:⬇️ carcanet.substack.com/p/pier-52-ja...

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 4w ago

An orange sunshade wheels about her head. The sunshade shading sun is yet a sun mimicked by colour, halo of the red and mild attendant of the coloured bone… —Iain Crichton Smith, “Girl with orange sunshade” from DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2021 www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017094...

Iain Crichton Smith
Girl with orange sunshade

An orange sunshade wheels about her head.
The sunshade shading sun is yet a sun
mimicked by colour, halo of the red
and mild attendant of the coloured bone.

Yet it is mimic as if the other sun
should not attack her, being saved by this
paper not passion which she learns to spin
as if herself were Fortune, pert-faced miss.

And this cool wheel about her ordered hair
is like the art we nourish in our rooms
on little water and a jar of air.
It holds us steady from the searing flames.
We mimic fire to shield us from the fire
and shade our heads with bright and paper poems.

Evan Jones (Ευριπίδες Ιωάννου)@evanpjones.bsky.social · 4w ago

#cavafy @carcanet.bsky.social

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 4w ago

PN Review 290 is here! Order a copy or subscribe: www.pnreview.co.uk/subscribe

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 4w ago

MASQUERADERS - the non-fiction debut from award-winning poet Anthony Vahni Capildeo is coming this month🔮 SWIPE to find an exclusive sale to celebrate - only until 19 July➡️ Masqueraders will be out 30 July. Pre-order now, with code JULYBOOKS15 for 15% off: www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017569...

Sasha Dugdale @sashadugdale.bsky.social · 4w ago

Am I the only one who has to look up a flight number in a poem? This is the daily flight from LHR to SAN, peopled with birds and ghosts. from Michael Schmidt’s poignant new Smith | Doorstop pamphlet @carcanet.bsky.social

BA 0265 (poem
Title)
... the birds not perched but seated properly in rows as if with
opera glasses to follow the red sun down.
I miss you. The birds do. 'Shadows lengthen' and it's night for good for you. I'm confident it's not very dark wherever you have gone.
There are no flames, either. Hell's no destination.
Maybe still audible the waves chewing the rocks below your house or there's unhallowed harmony, or a low voice reading into your blindness another history audiobook.
Id like to share with you the names of some places I flew over to be here:
Medicine Hat, Gimly, Flin Flon, Pukatawagan, Red Sucker Lake, Pikangikum, Assinibole, Nipawin,
treeless Plentywood, with the ghosts of forests teeming with the ghosts of extinguished birds, and Carrot River dry as a skeleton.
It's a sort of history that bears me back to you.
Another time I'll tell you, when you're listening.

Erik Pedersen @erikpedersen.bsky.social · 4w ago

20 books of poetry for summer 2026 @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social @fsgbooks.bsky.social @kayapress.bsky.social @carcanet.bsky.social @blacklawrence.bsky.social @alicejamesbooks.bsky.social @atriabooks.bsky.social @eccobooks.bsky.social www.ocregister.com/2026/07/07/2...

20 new books of poetry to add to your 2026 TBR reading lists

What would happen if you read more poetry in 2026? Let’s all give it a try and find out.

ocregister.com

Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 4w ago

In this week's video, Martina Evans reads from her collection Drunken Driving. Check it out:⬇️ youtu.be/jEdH2ZU7Xuc

Meet the Author: Martina Evans reads from Drunken Driving

Listen to Martina Evans read the first two chapters from her title, 'Drunken Driving'. For more info, and to buy the book: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800175631/drunken-driving/ Carcanet Press is supported by Arts Council England. Please consider donating to support our future work: https://www.paypal.me/carcanet Edited and produced by Pixel Assist www.pixelassist.co.uk

youtu.be

Mary O'Connell @mary1010.bsky.social · 4w ago

Beautiful reading by @leeannequinn.bsky.social from her new collection Landscape with Question published by @carcanet.bsky.social

Dr. Eleanor Hooker FLS @eleanorhooker.bsky.social · 4w ago

Fabulous launch this evening of @leeannequinn.bsky.social new collection 'Landscape With Question' @carcanet.bsky.social - with a great introduction by poet @sashadugdale.bsky.social, and just incredible readings from Leeanne. Can't wait for my copy to arrive in the post. #poetry #launch