Out-Spoken Press
@outspokenpress.bsky.social
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Independent poetry publisher 📧[email protected] https://linktr.ee/outspokenpress
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outspokenpress.bsky.social
GOOD MORNING HELLO to so many new faces 🙏

We’re Out-Spoken Press, we publish poetry & critical writing — you can see more about our recent titles below and we have exciting news on Editor @aanaxagorou.bsky.social’s 2025-26 list coming this week 👀
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Looking back at 2024:

[…] by Fady Joudah
Boiled Owls, Azad Ashim Sharma
Bark, Archive, Splinter, Jay Gao
Down, @chickenbex
Tongueless, Rojbîn Arjen Yiğit
I Sugar the Bones, Juana Adcock.

NEW bundle offer of all six 2024 titles for just £45 available now:

outspokenldn.com/shop/2024bundle
Thumbnail covers of 2024 books (on a blue circle on beige background) 2024 bundle offer: all six of our 2024 titles for just £45. Outspokenldn.com/press
outspokenpress.bsky.social
This also marks our first Eliot shortlisting as a Press which feels like a milestone. Shoutout to our editor @aanaxagorou.bsky.social for his vision and conviction 💙🥳
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Big news. Big. Huge. 🌝

Delighted that Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero is shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2025

🙏 to the judging panel & congratulations to all shortlisted poets. We hope this recognition can bring her work to more UK readers 🙏
TS Eliot Prize 2025 shortlisted collections:

Gillian Allnutt Lode Bloodaxe Books
Isabelle Baafi Chaotic Good Faber & Faber
Catherine-Esther Cowie Heirloom Carcanet Press
Paul Farley When it Rained for a Million Years Picador Poetry
Vona Groarke Infinity Pool The Gallery Press
Sarah Howe Foretokens Chatto Poetry
Nick Makoha The New Carthaginians Penguin Books
Tom Paulin Namanlagh Faber & Faber
Natalie Shapero Stay Dead Out-Spoken Press
Karen Solie Wellwater Picador Poetry Shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2025 - Natalie Shapero, Stay Dead
outspokenpress.bsky.social
HUGE congratulations to Natalie Shapero on the shortlisting of STAY DEAD for this year’s @tseliotprize.bsky.social !!!

🏜️📺💙
tseliotprize.bsky.social
We are thrilled to be able to reveal this year's T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist!
Our judges have chosen ten books "of great range, suggestiveness and power; from Entebbe to Manitoba... there is something here for everyone."

Find out more now: tseliot.com/prize/news/
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
tseliotprize.bsky.social
We are thrilled to be able to reveal this year's T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist!
Our judges have chosen ten books "of great range, suggestiveness and power; from Entebbe to Manitoba... there is something here for everyone."

Find out more now: tseliot.com/prize/news/
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Review of our September title, STAY DEAD by Natalie Shapero, in LARB

“Shapero’s mordant humor and intellectual agility throw a challenge to the reader: In contemporary life, are we dead or alive? Could we be both, or in between?”

>> lareviewofbooks.org/article/coug...
Los Angeles
LA ReviewofBoks RB
Cough Up the Pill
David Schurman Wallace reviews Natalie Shapero's new collection "Stay Dead."
By David Schurman Wallace • September 9, 2025
POETRY 08:30
Los Angeles
In all of her books, Shapero's strength comes through her thinking on the page. Without being rote, she is careful to develop the thread of an idea from each sentence to the next. Reading her work, it becomes clear how comfortable some contemporary poets have become with "leaps" that are more like abysses, relying on the reader to assume that there is a hidden connection that may not really exist. In Stay Dead, the connections tend to stay tight, working the starting idea of the poem for more material, and are less likely to digress into unusual pockets of fact or language that made some of her earlier work lighter, if still rich.
Humor remains, but the speech is starker-life or death, or death and then life again.
Varied and surprising as they are, there is something bracing about the negativity of the poems in Stay Dead.
They are uncompromising in their refusal of easy answers, the little lift that comes from appealing to love (or some other "basic human emotion") at the end of the poem. An intriguing suggestion comes in one of the epigraphs between sections, courtesy of Monet: "I FIND MYSELF DISGUSTED BY MY PROFESSION." Fatigued by experience, fatigued by the speaking voice, the desire to lose oneself can also register as a dissent against poetry's platitudes, which might make a career if you're lucky, but which don't seem to live up to the world's despair.
lareviewofbooks.org
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Are you a writer of Arab heritage with a poetry MS?

Check out this opportunity open to writers in English located anywhere - win $2000, US & UK publication

Deadline: 15 Oct
Send your MS, share widely >> noemipress.submittable.com
Are you a writer of Arab heritage with a poetry manuscript?
DEADLINE EXTENDED - ENTER BY 15 OCTOBER
$2000 PRIZE
plus
US PUBLICATION
with Noemi Press
and
UK PUBLICATION with Out-Spoken Press
NOEMI
{
GUEST JUDGE:
Farid Matuk
SERIES EDITORS:
Fady Joudah, Hayan Charara
OUT SPOKEN PRESS
Etel Adnan Poetry Prize
For a first or second book by a writer of Arab heritage
NOEMIPRESS.SUBMITTABLE.COM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Last call for our next course running Mondays 7-9pm, 6 Oct - 1 Dec

Tutors: Ella Frears, Jack Underwood, Anthony Anaxagorou

Starting on Monday - don’t miss out!
outspokenldn.com/academy-plus
OUT SPOKEN
academy plus
Nine-week Online Poetry Course
Join Ella Frears, Jack Underwood and Anthony Anaxagorou for our nine-week online poetry course.
Workshops: Mondays 7-9pm UK
plus
academy
6 October - 1 December 2025
outspokenldn.com/academy
outspokenpress.bsky.social
DEADLINE EXTENDED
If you’re a poet of Arab heritage, writing in English anywhere in the world, with a poetry manuscript - you now have until 15 October to enter the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize!

> $2000
> US publication with Noemi Press
> UK publication with Out-Spoken Press

noemipress.submittable.com
Are you a writer of Arab heritage with a poetry manuscript?
DEADLINE EXTENDED - ENTER BY 15 OCTOBER
$2000 PRIZE
plus
US PUBLICATION
with Noemi Press
and
UK PUBLICATION with Out-Spoken Press
NOEMI
GUEST JUDGE:
Farid Matuk
SERIES EDITORS:
Fady Joudah, Hayan Charara
OUT SPOKEN PRESS
Etel Adnan Poetry Prize
For a first or second book by a writer of Arab heritage
NOEMIPRESS.SUBMITTABLE.COM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
If anyone ever tries to tell you there's nothing you can do about the genocide in Gaza, don't believe them.

Long live Haia and all the students! Long live the people of Gaza! Free Palestine!!!
anthony_anaxagorou Haia Mohammed has just landed safely at Heathrow to take up her scholarship place at Goldsmiths University. After surviving over 700 days of Israeli genocide, she is now free to embrace her future, develop her writing and pursue her dreams without fear of bombing, or starvation or forced displacement.
A massive thank you to everyone who emailed their MP's regarding waiving the biometrics for the Gaza 40. The screenings were sat in Jordan last week where for the first time in nearly two years the students were given a full meal, a medical examination, access to running water and fresh clothes. They are all survivors of genocide. I hope the orientation process in the UK goes smoothly, and that their studies manifest long and fruitful careers.
When we first set out to try and get Haia out of Gaza in April there was (to our knowledge) not one successful case of a Gazan being evacuated to the UK since Oct 2023. A really special thank you to Patricia Ferguson and Jack Underwood who worked tirelessly for five months on Haia's case with me. To the Gaza Scholars Initiative, Goldsmiths University and all the MPs who signed petitions to have biometrics waived. Lastly, none of this would have been possible without the extraordinary heart, strength and resilience of Haia herself.
If anyone ever tries to tell you there's nothing you can do about the genocide in Gaza, don't believe them.
Long live Haia and all the students! Long live the people of Gaza! Free Palestine!!!
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Haia Mohammed has arrived safely to take up her scholarship place at Goldsmiths University.

A massive thank you to everyone who emailed their MP's regarding waiving the biometrics for the Gaza 40. They are all survivors of genocide.

Love to the extraordinary heart, strength and resilience of Haia.
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Looking forward to seeing some of you at this evening’s celebration. It does feel like a milestone and we’re excited for the next ten 🙃💙🙏
outspokenpress.bsky.social
💐 Today we are TEN 💐

With huge gratitude to every poet we have published and worked with, the whole Out-Spoken team, and every one of you who’ve read or recommended an Out-Spoken Press title or joined us for one of our workshops or events. THANK YOU 🙏
Celebrating 10 years of Out-Spoken Press
2015–2025

Out-Spoken Press logo large in white sits on top of a bunch of brightly coloured flowers on an electric blue background
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
ianhunt.bsky.social
Sarah Howe has a new book of poems coming out, Foretokens -- I like Loop of Jade. Have just seen that she is included also in this anthology of conversations between poets of ESEA heritage. #poetry
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Huge thanks to @PoetryBookSoc for including STATE OF PLAY as Book of the Week in their ESEA Heritage Month picks — this book, Eds. @jennywcreative.bsky.social & Eddie Tay, and its wide range of perspectives was a joy to work on 🙏

outspokenldn.com/shop/state
BOOK OF THE WEEK

STATE OF PLAY
Poets of East & Southeast Asian
Heritage in Conversation

EDITED BY
JENNIFER WONG & EDDIE TAY

-
SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM
ARTHUR SZE
JENNIFER LEE TSAI
TROY CABIDA
SARAH HOWE
ROMALYN ANTE
VICTORIA CHANG
SEAN WAI KEUNG
HELEN QUAH
MARYLYN TAN
MARY JEAN CHAN
JAY GAO YANYI
R.A. VILLANUEVA
CHEN CHEN
WILL HARRIS
LAURA JANE LEE
JOSHUA IP
NATALIE LINH BOLDERSTON
L KIEW KIT FAN
LI-YOUNG LEE
DONG LI
THERESA MUÑOZ
MONICA YOUN
LOUISE LEUNG
NINA MINGYA POWLES
TIM TIM CHENG
ANTONY HUEN MUKAHANG LIMBU
JENNY XIE
ETHAN YU
ERIC YIP
LORA SUPANDI
AARON MANIAM
FELIX CHOW
JINHAO XIE
ALVIN PANG
LEONG LIEW GEOK KHAIRANI BAROKKA
This crucial anthology from Out-Spoken Press collects together conversations between poets of ESEA heritage to bring us closer to understanding important questions about culture, heritage, history, and language, and urge us to "demand bolder and more imaginative ways of reading." (Sandeep Parmar) Get your copy here.
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Congratulations to the wonderful @juanapoetry.bsky.social on the longlisting of I Sugar the Bones for this years #SaltireBookAwards for Poetry! 💫💫💫
The Saltires
Scotland's
National Book
Awards
POETRY LONGLIST 2025
I Sugar the Bones
Poems
Juana Adcock
A thumbnail image of the book cover sits by a black and white author headshot of Juana Adcock The Saltires
POETRY
OUT SPOKEN PRESS
I SUGAR
THE
BONES
Poems
Juana
Adcock
Scotland's
National Book
Awards
LONGLIST 2025
The judges said:
A visceral, formally confident, compelling
collection. The fusing of body image with exploration of migration and language has fascinating results.
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
wasafirimag.bsky.social
📣 Orders are now open for our latest issue, Wasafiri 123!

Find interviews with Andre Bagoo, Cato Pedder, and Christina Sharpe, three translated Tamil poets, a poem by Devika Rege, and more fiction, reviews, articles, and poems.

www.wasafiri.org/issues/wasaf...
Wasafiri 123
Inside Wasafiri 123, you'll find interviews with Andre Bagoo and Christina Sharpe, a lead feature poem by Devika Rege, our 2024 Essay Prize winning articles…
www.wasafiri.org
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
carladenyer.bsky.social
Sickening. Starmer has nothing to say when I confront him about the Israeli companies parading "battle-tested" weapons at the #DSEI2025 Arms Fair in London - in other words, weapons that have been used to kill men, women and children in Gaza #StopDSEI
outspokenpress.bsky.social
💫 National Book Award longlisted collection Stay Dead 💫

www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...
outspokenpress.bsky.social
‘Shapero leaves a huge dent in oblivion to show us that it’s real.’
—Jack Underwood

STAY DEAD by Natalie Shapero OUT NOW

In her fourth collection, Shapero examines performance, power, comedy and despair through the lenses of method acting and abstract expressionism.

outspokenldn.com/shop/staydead
Cover of Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero: title appears in fat black eurostile caps with “stay” above and “dead” below a photo collage of b&w Joshua tree desert and old tv set, with a blue-green gradient sky. outspokenldn.com/shop/staydead 'In Stay Dead, Natalie Shapero leads us out from the wreckage into the brightly smouldering aftermath more precariously mortal, more humane and attentive and vivid than before. Her relentlessly dark, metaphysical poems of dying and not dying, surviving and not surviving, are as bleakly comical as they are halting.
Shapero always keeps her lyrics effortlessly turning, veering her syntax, squinting and tacking
- from abstract paintings, movie quotations and the private ownership of coastal redwoods, to the ocean hurling itself onto the rocks, the past, the afterlife, the dead that stay dead, and the dead that don't. Shapero leaves a huge dent in oblivion to show us that it's real.'
— Jack Underwood
OUT
SPOKEN PRESS
STAY DEAD
www.outspokenldn.com/shop/staydead
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Thank you to everyone who joined us for this last night! And huge 🙏 to Natalie Shapero, Prageeta Sharma & @aanaxagorou.bsky.social 💙💙
Zoom screenshot of Natalie Shapero smiling while holding up a copy of Stay Dead Zoom screenshot of Prageeta Sharma holding up the MS of her new book
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Huge thanks to @PoetryBookSoc for including STATE OF PLAY as Book of the Week in their ESEA Heritage Month picks — this book, Eds. @jennywcreative.bsky.social & Eddie Tay, and its wide range of perspectives was a joy to work on 🙏

outspokenldn.com/shop/state
BOOK OF THE WEEK

STATE OF PLAY
Poets of East & Southeast Asian
Heritage in Conversation

EDITED BY
JENNIFER WONG & EDDIE TAY

-
SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM
ARTHUR SZE
JENNIFER LEE TSAI
TROY CABIDA
SARAH HOWE
ROMALYN ANTE
VICTORIA CHANG
SEAN WAI KEUNG
HELEN QUAH
MARYLYN TAN
MARY JEAN CHAN
JAY GAO YANYI
R.A. VILLANUEVA
CHEN CHEN
WILL HARRIS
LAURA JANE LEE
JOSHUA IP
NATALIE LINH BOLDERSTON
L KIEW KIT FAN
LI-YOUNG LEE
DONG LI
THERESA MUÑOZ
MONICA YOUN
LOUISE LEUNG
NINA MINGYA POWLES
TIM TIM CHENG
ANTONY HUEN MUKAHANG LIMBU
JENNY XIE
ETHAN YU
ERIC YIP
LORA SUPANDI
AARON MANIAM
FELIX CHOW
JINHAO XIE
ALVIN PANG
LEONG LIEW GEOK KHAIRANI BAROKKA
This crucial anthology from Out-Spoken Press collects together conversations between poets of ESEA heritage to bring us closer to understanding important questions about culture, heritage, history, and language, and urge us to "demand bolder and more imaginative ways of reading." (Sandeep Parmar) Get your copy here.
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
outspokenpress.bsky.social
TONIGHT! Join us at 7pm UK for the online launch of Natalie Shapero’s STAY DEAD - with Prageeta Sharma & hosted by @aanaxagorou.bsky.social

Free | register to join the zoom: shaperostaydead.eventbrite.co.uk
outspokenpress.bsky.social
TONIGHT! Join us at 7pm UK for the online launch of Natalie Shapero’s STAY DEAD - with Prageeta Sharma & hosted by @aanaxagorou.bsky.social

Free | register to join the zoom: shaperostaydead.eventbrite.co.uk
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
ruralunease.bsky.social
Really looking forward to the online launch of Natalie Shapero's new book with @outspokenpress.bsky.social tomorrow!
outspokenpress.bsky.social
🏜️📺 Join us this MONDAY 1 Sept for the online launch of Natalie Shapero’s STAY DEAD 📺🏜️

7pm UK / free - register: shaperostaydead.eventbrite.co.uk
Online launch Monday 1 Sept 7pm UK
Stay Dead
Natalie Shapero with Prageeta Sharma hosted by Anthony Anaxagorou