Released 29th February, 2024 // 48 pages // 978-1-916938-06-9 // RRP £8.99
ways to say we’re not alone is a brilliant, immersive, and heartfelt collection. Simon Alderwick writes powerful poetry of the mundane, everyday acts of self-protection, and the small, quiet moments that hold within them a deep and moving tenderness. ways to say we’re not alone is a window into the lives of humans who are sometimes kind and sometimes cruel, who are often lost, and all the time yearning for connection. These poems ask the big questions of life and love, and offer you your own answers.
PRAISE for ways to say we're not alone:
Alderwick’s sense of language is quietly playful amidst the often stark backdrop of what it means to be a broken human. These poems dance with a profound surreality; a blue whale swims inside a packet of crisps, the speaker eats the moonlight. And even the bounds of the earth can’t contain how the speaker has ‘learned to read the stars,’ for ‘those stars meant more / than space and time and shit...’ And yet there’s a certain kind of yearning in ways to say we’re not alone — a longing, at times wistful, at others hesitant, for something or someone to love: tangible and real. Let these poems speak to how we all want to find moments of being with rather than alone — how ‘this would be a perfect place / for a photo, a memory,’ of that for which we earnestly desire.
— Ina Cariño, author of Feast
Comic without being flippant, intimate without being sweet, these are poems of remorse and tenderness which come alive on the page. Alderwick’s attention to the quiet moments of deferral or joy that characterise our relationships are wonderfully evocative, and he is adept at the kind of surreal fable which makes a reader consider their own capacity for magic.
— Jack Warren, author of Rude Mechanical
Simon Alderwick’s poetry is like playing your favorite video game all night long without a care in the world. Like binge watching ‘80s horror movies with your crush under the stars. It’s going home after a long day of work and blasting Metallica through your stereo. It’s packing a cooler full of ice cold beer to go to the beach with your buds. Which is to say, ways to say we’re not alone is a chokeslam straight to the heart and it’s beautiful.
— Shawn Berman, author of At the Movies
Simon Alderwick’s poems fizz with a deep uncertainty and moments of imagistic magic. These are poems of faith and love, reminding us that, ‘not all prayers are answered’ and bodies ‘look perfect covered in droplets’ of water. A blue whale is found in a crisp packet — Alderwick’s poems crackle with a sense of the mythical and invite readers to be children again, living in wonder. These are narratives. Poems that have a cinematic intensity. Stories where the fragility of our lives stains each noun and verb. One aspect of Alderwick’s work that I’ll be stealing is his use of repetition. The way it lends his poems a fierce and brooding music. A music that will call you back to re-read and re-read. A haunting debut.
— Marvin Thompson, author of Road Trip
ways to say we’re not alone is a powerfully immersive collection bringing together themes of modernity, humanity, home, storms, climate and nature. Its dark and intimate tone pulls us into these poems, with an evocative dreamlike quality unleashing memories, longing, despair, nostalgia weighted with hope, beauty and salvation. Alderwick’s voice is distinctively fresh and honest, with a searing touch of vulnerability he manages to bind visceral emotions, tenderness and humour masterfully to draw us in, surprise, and provide solace and connection. Exploring love, relationships, family, estrangement, sacrifice; his openness allows us to relate to poetics, the kindness of strangers, moments of desolation and deep torment; how we keep going, how to be ourselves.
— Louise Mather, author of The Dredging of Rituals
ABOUT simon alderwick:
simon alderwick grew up in Kingston, Surrey. He now lives in Oxford with his wife and daughters, having spent the last ten years living between England, the Philippines and Wales. ways to say we’re not alone is his first pamphlet.
