Released 31st December, 2022 // 66 pages // 978-1-915079-86-2
 
Real Cute Danger, Angela Cleland’s third collection, explores the experience of giving birth and becoming a parent “through the prism of horror and science fiction”. Poems like ‘I’m in Costa with the other new mums again’ deftly knock out the surfaces of a fake empire, a coffee shop, by comparing the setting with the realness of human flesh: “I know what it is to be meat, I am an animal, in the wild I would be dead right now.” Cleland claws away at the hysteria surrounding the female body in childbirth with her wildness and extravagant, unflinching, beauty.
 
PRAISE for Real Cute Danger:
Angela Cleland captures the fear and heartbreak of pregnancy, birth and motherhood with sharp and unexpected humour. Her work is strikingly original, drawing on horror and apocalyptic genres as well as the lyrical. This collection is so terrifying and sad and funny - so completely on point. After reading this, you will never be the same again.
   — Alison Winch, Darling, it’s Me
 
The poems in Real Cute Danger are sharply observed, funny and tender, as well as brilliantly inventive. It's an achingly honest account of early motherhood, and I found it very moving.
   — Kate Potts, Feral
 
ABOUT Angela Cleland:
Angela Cleland was born in Inverness in 1977. She studied at the University of Glasgow and Goldsmiths College. Cleland writes poetry, science fiction and fantasy. She’s had a variety of jobs to fund her writing habit, including store detective, knowledge engineer, business analyst, e-learning professional, poetry tutor and audiobook narrator.