A TELEGRAPH AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR**LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN POLLARD FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE'Impressive . . . tender, unflinching'** Guardian'This is poetry in the grand tradition of annihiliation by desire. It's what the young are always learning, and the old, if they are wise, ...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025***'Remarkable... entertaining... deft... moving... refreshing'Daily Telegraph'A richly rewarding account of a resonant cultural moment'Guardian**'Textured literary portraits of the masculine mind and body'Raymond Antrobus, author of The PerseveranceIn 1960, James Baldwin decisively diagnosed the trou...

**Following his Forward-prize shortlisted Rotten Days in Late Summer, Ralf Webb's breathtaking second poetry collection summons the West Country of his youth, a place where the real and the magical, folklore and modernity, life and death, collide‘Ralf Webb is an ethnographer of the present. He is interested in everyday life in the extreme’ Peter Gizzi**Highway Cottage weaves the story of a strange homecoming. A young poet travels to the heart of the Englis...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025*'Remarkable... entertaining... deft... moving... refreshing'Daily Telegraph'A richly rewarding account of a resonant cultural moment'Guardian'Textured literary portraits of the masculine mind and body'Raymond Antrobus, author...

Bounced back to his coastal hometown after university, a young man feels trapped by his narrow horizon and his brother's mental health crisis. Digging into his overdraft, he books a cheap room in Paris and escapes.There, while working shifts at a bookshop, he meets and rapidly falls for Tina, a woman nearly a decade older than him. He throws himself into her beautiful life and they spend the heat of summer in French bars, parks and garrets, before trailing their way down to Valenci...