RED HANDED explores England’s rural textile heritage with a decolonising lens, picking apart the global threads and entanglements that were created and enforced by British colonial rule. JLM Morton explores ways of coming to terms with this legacy and how belonging might be found in the ruins. A long poem, ‘Sentient’ forms part two of the collection, cultivating close attention to the minutiae of the land, to the hedgerow as cultural memory and a preoccupation with the unnoticed and the overlooked. Sentient is a bearing witness, an observation of survival and an invocation to the world around us to persist in the face of climate catastrophe. In the final part of the collection, the poems explore an intimate attachment to place that reaches back to the deep time of an ancient Celtic past and finds forgotten indigenous women’s rites and rituals embodied in the hills, commons and waterways of home.

Praise for JLM’s work

Lalline Paul – ‘‘The literary daughter of Alan Garner – female psychogeography, a rallying call to protect not only the land, but our right to roam.’

Nan Shepherd Prize judging panel – ‘spot on nature writing.’

Red Handed – ‘a stunning debut’ (Monique Roffey), ‘an incredible book’ (Pascale Petit), ‘original, evocative and assured’ (Martha Sprackland).

Caleb Parkin, Bristol City Poet 2020 – 22, has poems are in The Guardian, The Rialto, The Poetry Review and was guest poet on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. He has three pamphlets, his debut collection, This Fruiting Body (Nine Arches) was longlisted for the Laurel Prize and second collection, Mingle, is due October 2024. He tutors widely, holds an MSc Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes and is a practice-based PhD researcher at University of Exeter.

Sophie is a Bristol-based poet and copywriter for two charities providing learning opportunities for young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Her poems have been published widely, including in The Rialto, Ink Sweat and Tears and Magma. Her poetry won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize and she’s working on her debut collection about her experience as a kayaker and the shitty state of UK rivers. Sophie’s held writing residencies on Bristol Harbourside with Boat Poets and at Exeter Custom House with Literature Works. Learn more over at sophiedumont.co.uk

Amy Acre is a poet and editor, born in London and living in Nottingham. Her debut collection, Mothersong (Bloomsbury, 2023) is shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and was named a Book of the Year in The Telegraph, The Financial Times and California Review of Books. She runs award-winning indie publisher, Bad Betty Press.

Amy is the author of pamphlets, And They Are Covered in Gold Light (Bad Betty, 2019) and Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads (Flipped Eye, 2015), both selected as a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She’s written for Radio 4 and featured on The Last Dinosaur’s 2020 track, ‘In The Belly of a Whale’. Her work has been selected as a BBC Pick of the Week and a London Review Bookshop recommendation.

Eryn McDonald is a multi-disciplinary artist from the South-West. They write a lot about gender, sexuality, politics and, more recently, health and burnout. They are currently co-creating a show about transness, masculinity and girlhood with Satellite of Love’s very own team members Aish Humphreys and Cal Wensley.

They recently completed a short poetry film commission for Apples & Snakes, and are the director of a short documentary on drag and gender identity called Queer Is A Tender Feeling.

They are driven by political rage, love for community, and a burning desire to infiltrate capitalism.

Eryn’s promotional picture was provided by Kathryn O’Driscoll

Jemima Hughes is a multi slam winning performance poet who will sweep you up and drag you through the “mindfield” of the unorthodox, swiftly spinning it into the ordinary. She brings you into the storm, pauses for breaks in the clouds, and sits with you in the aftermath to discuss how to rebuild. Jemima’s debut poetry collection ‘Unorthodox’, published with Verve Poetry Press in 2020, challenges perceptions of living with sexual trauma and mental health issues through personal experiences. Her new 2023 collection ‘Into The Ordinary’ aims to change perspectives on how we can make the world a more accepting, understanding and comfortable place for those living with these experiences.