I thought it wasn't possible to feel any more thrilled about joining Nine Arches Press
- then I see the stunning cover of my new poetry collection, 'What Girls Do In The Dark'.
Out October 2020
https://www.ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/what-girls-do-in-the-dark.html

New collection forthcoming in October 2020 from Nine Arches Press

I’m thrilled to be on the 2020 list of Nine Arches Press!
I’m in the company of a fantastic group of poets. I couldn’t be happier.

https://www.ninearchespress.com/about-us/news.html

“Midlands-based independent poetry publisher Nine Arches Press, which achieved Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation status in 2018, will publish eleven new books of poetry in 2020, from a mix of established and emerging poets from across the UK and across the world…

Acclaimed novelist Rosie Garland will also join the 2020 list in October with her third full collection of poems What Girls Do in the Dark, a book alive with galactic, glimmering energy. Rosie’s award-winning short and long fiction, poems and essays have been widely anthologised and in 2019 she was selected by Val McDermid as one of the 10 most compelling LGBTQI+ writers working in the UK.”

Image: Poets confirmed for the Nine Arches Press 2020 list
Top: l-r: Jennifer Wong, Rishi Dastidar, Abegail Morley, Geraldine Clarkson, Nina Mingya Powles.
Bottom: l-r: Peter Kahn, Maria Taylor, Gregory Leadbetter, Rosie Garland, Kate Fox

I am delighted to announce the launch of ‘As In Judy’ – my new poetry collection with Flapjack Press. It’s my first solo poetry publication since ‘Everything Must Go’ (Holland Park Press 2012). I’m really excited.

I wish to express heartfelt gratitude to Char March for her generous editorial input, without which this collection would be far weaker.

And to Ruth Fainlight, for her inspiring suggestion that ‘As In Judy’ would make a great title.

Both John Hyatt and David Hoyle have made blushingly complimentary comments about the poems.

“The reason I love Rosie’s work so much is that she provides food for thought. She addresses issues that need addressing, and imagines the inner and outer landscapes we all inhabit with eloquence and grace. Shed your light, Rosie.” David Hoyle 2016

“You spend all that time trying to understand the world, its family relationships,
friendships, social systems through a serial adventure of episodes mundane and
or memorable. You spend all that time trying to fit into the human. Then, you are
propelled into realisation through a life-threatening disease. Travelling not
outward into the world but inward to the beating heart of the matter, you dive
deep into the DNA. You are the resplendent there. You are the clicking queen of
the insects. When you dress again in flesh and skin, you go amongst the sleeping
humans and new and glittering worlds are left in your wake. Welcome to Rosie!”

John Hyatt 2016

 OUT OF PRINT

Creatures of the Night - performance poetry

Published by purpleprosepress, 2003 under Rosie Garland's stage name of Rosie Lugosi.

Published as part of Rosie's residency at 'Creatures of the Night' at greenroom Manchester, Manchester's longest running poetry slam.
Including poems such as 'Two Queens', published in Mslexia magazine.

Excerpt…

“Two Queens

I’d arranged the Palace Hotel bar, at seven. Figured
The cavernous hall, high gilded ceiling would suit
World-changers. They were already there;
Had ordered beer in straight glasses. I knew them at once:

Her, from the bas-reliefs in the Met; and her,
From technicolour gloss in A level History.
“You both look fatter,” I said, “than the pictures.”
“There’s court portraitists for you,” boomed Nefertiti,

Halfway through her pint. Patted a teak-stained
Roll of fat which hung about her navel. “Likewise:
When did you last see a royal virgin painted fat?”
Blared Elizabeth, and thumped me on the back…”

Things I Did While I Was Dead - Flapjack Press, 2010

Click to purchase book at Flapjack Press

Reviews:

‘Peerless and passionate award-winning poetry’

Powerfully articulating themes as diverse as relationships, childhood, serial-killers and gender, this passionate and thought-provoking collection showcases Rosie's affecting and award-winning poetry.

"Candid, tender and surprising, these are poems about love and longing, myth and mirrors, the self and the other self. Things I Did While I Was Dead packs a powerful punch" - Jackie Kay MBE, poet & novelist

"One of the country's finest performance poets" - Apples and Snakes

"She is the mistress of language, whether it's making you laugh or informing your emotions. Here is a courageous artist with guile and expertise in equal measure" - Gerry Potter, poet

Rosie's book is available from the Flapjack Press shop [via PayPal or cheque payable to Flapjack Press].

Poem example -

Angry Goddess Seeks Similar

Mary! Call the babysitter and let me
take you dancing. You used to be such a mover
before all that God wore you down to milquetoast plastic.
Blow your nose, remind your hips how to shimmy.
Show them how it’s done. Stick out your bloody tongue:
I’ll lend you my spare necklace of severed hero’s heads,
a set of brand-new steak-knives.
Aren’t you sick of their prayers? Their excuses?
Start by smashing what’s left of the wedding china;
ink your foot into the earth. Twist rage
into a rope trick and climb through your halo
up to where the dark is giddy. I’m laughing
sequins to light up the dancefloor. Write
your own horoscope. Make this your auspicious day.

Everything Must Go Everything Must Go - Holland Park Press, 2012

Read one of the poems here:

A donor’s card

"There’s nothing here that I’ll be needing.
I don’t do souvenirs. No grave-goods,
no grave. No-one will do their back in
digging me a hole; nor have the job

of unpeeling rotten carnations from my marker.
Stretch me out in a place of arc-lights. Open me up.
Reveal my inner workings, the plot twist no-one was expecting.
Let the harvesting commence. May my heart thump love

in the warm nest of another’s ribs, my liver filter
someone else’s happy anniversary, my lungs give voice
to laughter and whistling out of tune at bus stops.
Lay me to rest under the bright faces, the white coats of angels."

Being told you have cancer is a life-changing event. Especially when you are a singer and performer and the diagnosis is throat cancer. Everything Must Go is Rosie Garland’s unflinching perspective on her relationship with the illness.
‘A wry look at what life can do to you, expressed with poetic clarity’ (Bernadette Jodh)
Neither melodramatic nor tearful, it paints vivid pictures, so you can see the waiting room or the ward and feel that you’re joining her on this journey. Rosie is a true performer and this shines through in the poems, which have a dynamic and rhythmic beat, especially when things get tough. Most importantly, she shows how any disease – and cancer especially – attacks your humanity and more specifically your femininity. Yet the way she puts this into words is also uplifting.

“Who is this stranger who crept in and stole my body, and left me with a sack of sticks?”
and
”Throwing up over the consultant when he asks you how you’re feeling.
Throwing up so hard it comes out of your nose.
Acquiring the skill of throwing up accurately.”

You can read each poem on its own, but together they tell the story of a journey. This is a rather rare occurrence in poetry collections and makes Everything Must Go something special.

‘Everything Must Go’
By Rosie Garland
Published by Holland Park Press
RRP £8.99 (paperback)
ISBN 9781907320224

Reviewed by Lynsey Evans in “Book a Poet”

“Wow. ‘Everything Must Go’ is breath-taking in its laid-bare honesty. Rosie Garland’s poems tell of her battle with cancer from the moment she’s told until she receives the news its in remission. It’s not a pitiful or melodramatic narration, or even negative – Rosie expresses her experiences; her initial numbness and shock, her hair loss, her sickness, the wanting to disappear, the hospital, the pain and weakness, the treatment, the loss of her femininity – it’s heart-breaking but Rosie is so strong in her poems that’s it’s somewhat uplifting. My personal favourites from the collection are ‘Camouflage’ and ‘Dignity’. Quite stunning and bought a tear to my eye.
Highly recommended”
Source: http://www.bookapoet.co.uk/book_reviews/book_reviews/august_2012/

Now available!
Rosie Garland’s new collection of poems, ‘As In Judy’.

Flapjack Press, 2016

I wish to express heartfelt gratitude to Char March for her generous editorial input, without which this collection would be far weaker.
And to Ruth Fainlight, for her inspiring suggestion that ‘As In Judy’ would make a great title.

‘The reason I love Rosie’s work so much is that she provides food for thought. She addresses issues that need addressing, and imagines the inner and outer landscapes we all inhabit with eloquence and grace. Shed your light, Rosie.’ David Hoyle 2016

  A poem from the collection:

When You Grow Up

At night, she leaps and does not land. Spreads her arms and soars
above the fenced and neatly weeded garden. Her dreams
are practice sessions where she lifts cars, sees through walls, fights

dragons. She is a pirate captain, a queen, a horse. She is neither girl
nor boy: the distinctions are irrelevant when her small body encompasses
male and female; human, beast. A turbulent child figure-heading

the prow of her beaked ship, she buckles on armour, rescues
princesses from charming princes and spinning wheels,
fearless of the shapes beneath the bed. Too soon

she hears the summons: Breakfast! Now!
Blinks this world into focus. Hushes battle cries,
sheathes her sword between the pages of her book.

Every bedtime her mother tucks in
the sheet of marriage, husband, children: tucks it in tight.

© Rosie Garland 2016

Join us to celebrate the launch of What Girls Do in the Dark by Rosie Garland

Join Rosie Garland plus guest poets Tania Hershman and Ian Humphreys to celebrate the publication of Rosie's new collection What Girls Do in the Dark.
Thursday 12 November 7.30pm (GMT)
This event will be streamed live through the Nine Arches Press YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/NineArchesPress/videos
Those who register to 'attend' will receive an event link by email the day before the event.

What Girls Do in the Dark invites us to leap into deep space, to venture through strange night-time transformations, to discover not just outer-space, but inner space, where the body and the self are made of infinite galaxies. Rooted in the gothic imagination, mythology and the uncanny, these poems contain magnitudes and magic, feminist fables starstruck with science and astronomy.

Rosie is joined by writer Tania Hershman. How High Did She Fly was joint winner of Live Canon's 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition. Her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book and what if we were all allowed to disappear was published in March by Guillemot Press. Tania is also the author of Terms and Conditions (Nine Arches, 2017), a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers' & Artists' Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of @OnThisDayShe and curator of short story hub ShortStops.
Rosie is also joined by Ian Humphreys, a West Yorkshire based poet. His debut collection Zebra was published by Nine Arches Press in 2019. His work is widely published in journals including The Poetry Review, The Rialto and Magma. Awards include first prize in the Hamish Canham Prize, and highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Zebra was nominated for the Portico Prize. A fellow of The Complete Works, Ian’s poems are showcased in Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe).

More details about What Girls Do in the Dark including a link to buy can be found https://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/what-girls-do-in-the-dark.html

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rosie-garlands-online-launch-of-what-girls-do-in-the-dark-tickets-126207854089?ref=estw

Publication day: What Girls Do in the Dark (Nine Arches Press)

Rosie Garland’s dauntless and enthralling new poetry collection, What Girls Do in the Dark, invites us to leap into deep space - across a universe where light, names, place and time become the “distance between things that stand like sisters”. We venture through strange night-time transformations, between northerly points and places of being and not-being. In a twilight alive with glimmering energy, we discover not just outer-space, but inner space – where the body and the self are made of infinite galaxies, illuminated for the briefest blink of a life.
Garland’s poetry is rooted in the realm of gothic imagination, mythology and the uncanny. It contains magnitudes and magic, feminist fables starstruck with science and astronomy. Like comets, these dazzling poems explore containment, liberation, near-misses, extinction, and ultimately, they ask what it means to escape the pull of gravity and blaze your own bright, all-consuming and astonishing path.

£9.99 – available now

https://ninearchespress.com/shop.html#!/What-Girls-Do-in-the-Dark-Rosie-Garland/p/215785787/category=8486213

ISBN: 978-1-913437-05-3
eISBN: 978-1-913437-06-0
Price £9.99
Date: 15th October 2020
Format: Paperback
Extent: 72 pp