Bøger i Flap Series serien

Portrait of Colossus, Samatar Elmi's searingly forthright debut poetry pamphlet, brims with a mix of vulnerability and erudition. Pitched between the lilt of hooyo's admonitions and Ted Hughes' eye for the natural world, many of the poems reconcile disparate worlds, cultures and identities, firing them with the lyricism of Dawud's Psalms.

In Say, Sarala Estruch explores the limits of language in the face of overwhelming loss and attempts to forge a language with which to probe subjects that still remain largely taboo. In doing so, Say casts a slant light on the scars our ancestors carry, both those we inherit and those we choose to leave behind.

Grammar of Passage details a German family's quiet lives as they are pulled into the gathering maelstrom of the first half of the Twentieth Century. Monika Cassel's attention to detail in this debut, tempered with a deep empathy brings individual moments to vivid life, deftly demonstrates how poetry can excavate and reinvigorate history.

Staking a landmark for the UK's Latinx community, Katherine Lockton's debut pamphlet, Paper Doll, is a tract of the unseen made visible and given a striking, defiant vocabulary. There is no smooth ride to be had here. As the poet puts it in the poem The Paper Doll Chain, "she will defy me; time after time/ teaching me how to live when she does."

The Sideways for It is a tour de force of poetic invention. Crafted to read as the eye leads, the poems are experienced both as commentary and personal engagement. Ian's work draws us into 'the silence of space,' urges us to observe the bridge cupping its shadow 'like a lover,' and the 'delicate proboscis of the moth'.

The poems in Katie Hale's Breaking the Surface are populated with totems of our wild, essential truths- from the raven bearing witness to death, to the wolf's dark appetite. Hale interrogates desire in its different forms and unpicks the seams of myths, folktales and fairy stories, offering them up with new life. A self-assured debut.

In 'Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads', aliens and time machines, Lambrusco and apocalyptic first kisses, broken relationships and breast-shaped mountains are perfect companions for a delicate dance through Hill Valley, Wagamama and potato fields in Nepal. The language, open-hearted and burlesque, is lifted from hypnotherapy podcasts, ad agency jargon, the fine distillate of the worst things we think about ourselves. These are poems alive with tingling histamines and humming generators. They slip between lines of conversation, sneak into your bedroom at night, haunt your dreams.