Just Breathe and Full Body Reclaim, With Trish Kerrison and Caroline Stancer

In the run-up to Christmas, we will be launching Trish Kerrison’s first full collection, Just Breathe, alongside Full Body Reclaim by Caroline Stancer, which is the eleventh in Five Leaves’ successful New Poetry series* of pamphlets featuring debut publications from talented emerging poets living or working in the East Midlands.

Trish Kerrison is the mother of two young men with the life-limiting condition Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Her Five Leaves New Poetry pamphlet Beyond Caring told the story of her life as a carer. “Just” breathing is an act we barely think about, yet without which we woud not survive. The poems in Just Breathe are a raw and frank invitation to consider the effects of watching those you love gradually become unable to do what we all take for granted.

Caroline Stancer is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, having gained an MA from Nottingham Trent University. Her collection, Full Body Reclaim, is at its heart about living fully. There are poems about recovery after trauma and abuse, about gendered power relationships, and about parenting, love and loss. Often using the animal world as metaphor, a theme of transformation and the affirmation of life runs through the collection.

*This series of pamphlets is by regional writers coming to print for the first time in pamphlet or book form. We never reprint, and we never publish anything more by the writers – it’s a development project… Except Trish’s first pamphlet Beyond Caring sold out in three weeks and has been reprinted twice, and her new Just Breathe is a companion volume. As Picasso said, it’s all about “learning the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist”.

Note that this event will be held at Nottingham Central Library, and will start at the earlier-than-usual time of 6.30pm.

Bar available. Free entry, but please book to reserve your seat.