In 2019, Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for a fifth time, in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Jacqueline Saphra and Jane Commane as selecting editors. After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist to shortlist, three poets emerged as clear choices: Krystelle Bamford, Claire Cox and Hannah Jane Walker.

Primers Volume Five brings together a showcase from each of the three poets. At the core of these poems are the milestones and critical moments of our lives and, vitally, the ties that bind us to those we love. From the tides of grief to surfing the wave of birth, these often courageous and candid poems are distinctive in their engagement with fear, loss and self-discovery, and how they emerge afresh, bold and illuminating. An insightful collection of new work from some of poetry's most talented emerging voices.

"Each of these poets moved us from a very first read with courage, openness and authenticity and each walks an exhilarating edge, daring to take risks with both language and content." - Jacqueline Saphra

About the Author
Jane Commane is a poet, editor and publisher. Her first full-length collection, Assembly Lines, was published by Bloodaxe in 2018. A graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme, for a decade she also worked in museums and archives and in 2016 she was chosen to join Writing West Midlands' Room 204 writer development programme Jane is editor at Nine Arches Press, co-editor of Under the Radar magazine, and is co-author, with Jo Bell, of How to Be a Poet, a creative writing handbook (Nine Arches Press).In 2017, she was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. In 2019, Jane was commissioned by Historic England and the Poetry Society as part of the Where Light Falls project to write a poem alongside community groups which was projected onto the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and viewed by over 15,000 people over three nights as part of a music, poetry and light installation. Jacqueline Saphra is a poet, playwright, teacher and activist. She is the author of nine plays, five chapbooks and five poetry collections. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing But Naked Women (The Emma Press) won Best Collaborative Work at The Sabotage Awards. Recent collections from Nine Arches Press are All My Mad Mothers (shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize), Dad, Remember You are Dead and One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets. Jacqueline is a founder member of Poets for the Planet and teaches at The Poetry School. Her latest collection, Velvel's Violin (Nine Arches Press, 2023) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Krystelle Bamford's poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review and a number of anthologies. Awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Raised in the US, she now lives in Scotland, completing a Creative Writing MLitt at the University of St Andrews and giving birth to two wee, radge kids. Born in Hong Kong, Claire Cox has an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University where she was awarded Blackwell's Prize for best student. Currently a research student at Royal Holloway, studying poetry and disaster. Co-founder and Associate Editor of ignitionpress, her poems have appeared in Magma, The Butcher's Dog and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Hannah Jane Walker is a poet, theatre maker and producer from Saffron Walden. She studied literature at the University of East Anglia and a poetry MA at Newcastle University. She is an associate artist at the National Centre for Writing and Cambridge Junction.


Book Information
ISBN 9781911027959
Author Jane Commane
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Nine Arches Press
Publisher Nine Arches Press