Bloodaxe Showcase

Join us for a showcase celebrating some of the most exciting contemporary poets published by the revolutionary Bloodaxe Books.

Set out with *Amanda Dalton* on a journey through our hidden and ghostly selves, our insides and our ‘other’ as she explores the myriad ways the human body voices unspeakable truths in her collection *Fantastic Voyage*. Take root in the reedbeds, meadows and marshes of the Norfolk Broads with *Matt Howard’s **Broadlands*. And hear *Sarah Holland-Batt,* one of Australia’s best-known poets, fearlessly probe the body’s animal endurance, appetites and metamorphoses as she reads from *The Jaguar*. *Author Bios *Amanda Dalton is a poet and playwright. Her debut *How to Disappear* was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1999, and was followed by *Stray* in 2012. Smith|Doorstop published a pamphlet of two long poems, *Notes on Water*, in 2022, which was re-created for two voices and soundscape for BBC Radio 3’s Between the Ears, and is now included in *Fantastic Voyage*, her third book-length book of poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2024). Amanda writes extensively for BBC Radio 4 and 3 including original drama, poetry-dramas, classic adapt-ations, re-imaginings of film, and lyric essays. Her theatre writing includes text for outdoor and site-specific performance, and drama for young people including commissions with Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sheffield Theatres and Keswick’s Theatre By The Lake. Matt Howard is a poet and environmentalist who worked in various roles for the RSPB for more than a decade. His debut collection *Gall *was published by The Rialto in 2018, winning the inaugural Laurel Prize for Best First Collection in 2020 and the 2018 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry, and shortlisted for the 2019 Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize. His second book-length collection, *Broadlands*, is published by Bloodaxe this year. Matt is also an editor and events programmer. He co-founded The RSPB and The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition in 2011 and was co-editor of Magma 72 – The Climate Change Issue. He has been poet in residence for both the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and the Wordsworth Trust. He was the Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds in 2021-23.Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning Australian poet, editor, and critic. Her three volumes of poetry – *Aria, The Hazards *and *The Jaguar* – have each received major Australian literary awards, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Stella Prize. She is also a critic, and her column on contemporary Australian poetry for The Australian newspaper was subsequently collected and published as *Fishing for Lightning: The Spark of Poetry*. She is a Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Her UK retrospective, *The Jaguar: Selected Poems*, is published by Bloodaxe this year. She will be in the UK to give readings from the book in autumn 2024, supported by a travel grant from Australia Council for the Arts. This event has a limited number of bursary tickets available for people who might not otherwise be able to afford them. You can apply here.