Released 30th June, 2024 // 978-1-916938-24-3 // 98 pages // RRP £12.99
 
Divine Hours is a collection of poetry which has that intangible sense of being in the presence of a master craftsman, showing us the possibilities of language at its most inventive, and its most necessary. Simon Barraclough's work showcases a confidence in the music and structure of poetry's potential, and a willingness to test the mettle of words beyond the constraints of their usual associations
 
PRAISE for Divine Hours:
 
Simon Barraclough’s associative flourishes of the unconscious are reminiscent of Joyce; his dark, bathetic humour recalls Beckett; his majestic lines and themes are Miltonic. And yet. These dazzling poems are entirely distinctive. Simon has again put his inimitable voice and style into a collection of poems that resembles nothing else being written today, restoring my faith that innovations in poetry are not only still possible, but being enacted by capable hands.
   — Kathryn Maris
 
What Divine Hours displays in super-abundance is an awareness of the quicksilver nature of play — how serious and direct a method it is of getting at the heart of matters. And it’s really this that we recognise in him: the poet as revelator, showing us our most intimate attempts to negotiate a reality that seems determined only to manifest itself in the things we invent.
   — Bill Herbert
 
ABOUT Simon Barraclough:
Simon Barraclough was born and raised in Yorkshire — the son of an Irish nurse and an English tractor builder/musician — and has lived in London since 1997. He studied literature at Nottingham and Sussex universities and writes prose as well as poetry. He has devised and performed many multimedia live-literature events, including Psycho Poetica, The Debris Field, Sunspots, and Vertiginous.