Ellora Sutton, author of  Little Bitch (Verve, 2026), and Imogen Wade, author of  Girl, Swooning (Corsair, 2026), met in Goldfinch Books, Alton, Hampshire,  to chat girlhood and God. They discovered that they live ten minutes apart and are now best friends.

SLEERICKETS  is a weekly podcast about poetry and other intractable problems, produced by Alice Allan, Cameron Clark, Brian Platzer, and Matthew Buckley Smith. Alice also makes the podcast  Advice from an Unknown Poet  with frequent  SLEERICKETS  guest Jonathan Farmer.

17th November 2025 Dear Tita Marj, Happy Autumn from my side of the world. It feels right to begin this conversation just as one major poetry book prize ceremony has ended here, and another is already on its way for [...]

This conversation took place at a cocktail bar in Peckham. Clare Pollard had the Dirty Bellini and Helen Bowell had the Burnt Cherry Amaretto Sour.

And dark and true and tender is the North
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I caught up with Selima in Lyme Regis, on the Jurassic Coast, where she has lived for the past forty years. It was a blustery December day, and we met in the lounge of the Alexandria Hotel, sinking into two [...]

On Headshots

Both Howe and Ravinthiran’s books excavate personal and political histories, tracing the evolutions of myths along the fault lines of conflict and intergenerational trauma.

The conversation below is an edited version of an exchange they had over Zoom.

In 2008, the level of poets of colour published by major presses was less than 1%. By 2020, it was over 20%. The Complete Works – an initiative spearheaded by Bernardine Evaristo – played a significant role in this change by supporting 30 poets from 2008 to 2020. It has become the most successful collective ever formed in British poetry.

– ‘Mapping the Future: The Complete Works Poets’, edited by Karen McCarthy Woolf and Nathalie Teitler (Bloodaxe).