History of Present Complaint

Exciting news… my debut prosetry chapbook titled History of Present Complaint will be published by Close To The Bone in February 2021!!!

Close To The Bone is releasing their first ever poetry chapbook series called ‘First Cut’ which will publish a brand new poetry chapbook by a different poet each month, beginning in a couple of weeks with Stephen J. Golds’ Poems For Ghosts in Empty Tenement Windows, and continuing throughout 2021.

On 26th October, the anniversary of my dad’s death, I saw a tweet from C2TB asking poets whose work is deemed ‘too real’ and ‘too dark’ by mainstream publishers to send over their grit lit. On a whim, I emailed the prosetry manuscript that I’d completed at the end of September to them, promptly berated myself for being so hasty and not having looked up their guidelines, prepared myself for rejection, cast it from my mind, and spent the day crying and drinking Southern Comfort (dad’s favourite drink) with my brother.

Later that night, before going to bed, I checked my email to find out what fresh hell the universe had in store for me the following day. I had an email from Stephen that honestly changed my life: he said he loved my book and wanted to publish it.

I was drunk and sad and tired and felt like total shit, so didn’t believe that the email was real. I closed the laptop and went to bed. I said, “Maybe it’ll still be there in my inbox in the morning.” And it was. And I couldn’t believe it. And I responded to Stephen with a more professional version “OH MY GOD THANK YOU SO MUCH FUCKING HELL YES OF COURSE LET’S DO THIS!”

I signed the contract on 30th October and then proceeded to have a total mental breakdown (I’ll write about that soon) hence me only sharing this incredible/scary/wonderful/joyous news with you now. But all the while it was you, the readers and followers of my mad little blog, who I was most excited to tell.

So here we are:

History of Present Complaint is slated for release 26th February 2021.

AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

More details to follow.

H xx