I write with exciting news. My new collection, my ninth, is out this week from Valley Press.
This post is by way of a guide to Earwig Country, and a passport to what is probably my boldest book to date. Don’t stray from the path, eat only the edible plants when you forage your way through this book.
The title (and its title poem) very much sums up the themes, which include Coming of Age, Love, Mental Health, The Body, Bereavement, Family, Women in Life and Literature. Nature in Trouble is also a key theme, and the notion of Foraging underpins the poems, as we poets do go a-foraging for new poems as often as we can.
The blurb (not on the book cover) reads“Beautiful things have inner horrors
Many of the poems on the 120 pages, reflect earworms, not just music but memories which repeat on the brain, things that are hard to let go of. Anxiety has a way of doing this.
I was delighted and slightly embarrassed to read Valley Press’ Jamie McGarry wax lyrical about this book on his Substack, which I quote with full permission.
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“Earwig Country, by Angela Topping This collection is no less affecting than Breaking Barriers, but reaches the same end from the opposite direction: Angela is a veteran poet with eight previous collections to her name (the first being the same age as me), and brings every ounce of her intellect, passion and experience – both in literature and life – to this banquet of words. In fact, she brings her full talents to bear on every single line, aided by ‘Editor at Large’ Teika Bellamy, who commissioned this volume in late 2022. (Teika is still in our orbit, incidentally, and warming up her next project as we speak.)At 120 pages, there’s a lot of poetry here, and it’s one to savour rather than flick through; every other poem has the power to change the way you think about its chosen topic, and every half dozen pages is a piece that will leave you absolutely floored. The rest are just plain brilliant, but that’s to be expected; you don’t get nine collections published across four decades without being a bona fide genius.For the casual browser, I should stress that it’s not all about earwigs. The title poem describes how “hedges held aloft whole tea services of bone china” (the bindweed plant, as featured on the cover), but the narrator discovers “beautiful things have inner horrors I learned to be wary of” (the earwigs). Angela requested that second line be used in the book’s publicity, while I suggested the conclusion of a poem about an heirloom biscuit tin, “Where do they go, those things of little consequence we don’t recall discarding?” I think together, they give you a sense of the collection’s overall preoccupations.” |
This book is available from me for £15, plus £3.10 post and packaging (second class) £3.90 First class.
It is also available from Valley Press https://www.valleypressuk.com/shop/p/earwig-country
The Poetry Book Society https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/collections/summer-2024-listings/products/earwig-country-by-angela-topping-pre-order
Coles Books https://coles-books.co.uk/earwig-country-by-angela-topping
Also from Waterstones and Amazon
This book has been over 8 years in the making. Poems include a range of forms, one was a first prize winner and others have appeared in prize anthologies as well as magazines including Magma, Pennine Platform and Stand.