Coming This October: Three deeply-human poetry collections from Parthian

Out next month: three brand new poetry collections from Parthian:

Graveyards On Other Planets – Roberto Pastore:

'Profound, darkly funny, and deeply human.' – Joshua Jones

In his sophomore collection, Roberto Pastore hones in on an era of constant flux, violence and grief, offering a kind of bewildered solace with a misfit voice that feels truly renewed. ‘I attend the reunion of myself./ Swapping out lime water for chamomile tea./ Comb-over days in which we refuse to accept what is lost.’ 

In poems that are self-reflexive and elegiac, yet full of flashes of the unexpected, we are invited to look tenderly and unflinchingly at our own mysterious experience of living, our own ‘sad heartsong’. 

Here are poems that feel both intimate and timely, yet somehow beamed in from another planet, far, far away.

Breakfast with the Scavengers – Ben Rhys Palmer:

'These poems are romantic, apocalyptic, welcoming, terrifying, funny and heartbreaking all at once.' – Caroline Bird

In Ben Rhys Palmer’s joyful debut collection, discombobulated robots rub shoulders with philosophising hyenas, orangutan brides, Mesopotamian fish gods, and a psychotherapist from outer space.

A Welsh poet based in Mexico, his poems about Mexico capture the magic and vibrancy of a country André Breton once described as ‘the most surrealist in the world.’ 

At once funny, tender, and beautifully bizarre, Breakfast with the Scavengers explores love, loss, loneliness, our never-ending quest for connection, and those blink-and-you-miss-them moments of transcendence that can light up our lives.

Moon Base One – Jemma L. King:

‘In Moon Base One, Jemma L. King transports the reader between the sea and the stars; between mother and child; between the body and the vastness around it, so these are not separate spaces but part of the same orbit. King has a gift for writing in a way that’s relentlessly inventive and so often breathtaking. Raw heart, electric imagery and undeniable skill – Jemma L. King’s best yet.’ – Natalie Ann Holborow

'A masterclass in metaphor. From foetal spacemen to the ever-shifting landscape of the maternal body, here is poetry microcosmic and macrocosmic, intimate and vast, gorgeous and visceral. It moved me; it made me want to write; it was brimful of loss and hope and complexity. I loved it.' – Emily Blewitt