Backalong : winner of the Mslexia Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition

Author: Nia Broomhall

Poetry by individual poets

Published on 19 September 2024 by Bloodaxe Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Other | 32 pages
149 x 210 x 23mm | 76g

Backalong, a dialect word from Nia Broomhall’s native Somerset, describes any point in the past – it could be this March, last March, or 1979. True to its title, her impressive debut collection observes the distant past and recent past with the same eyes: the distant past through poems of place and origin; the recent through poems that track the process of grieving for someone who was right there, not so long ago. Through its musicality of language, Backalong searches for joy, finding what persists – and finding the words to pick out what shines, despite everything.