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THERE, ON THE HORIZON, SWINGING TOWARDS US …

So what (un)earthly delights are we offering in 2017? 

Here’s the line-up so far :

JULY 

Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile

by Adelle Stripe 

adelle author pic

 

“You write what’s said, you don’t lie. Or say it didn’t happen when it did all the time…”

Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is the keenly anticipated debut novel by Adelle Stripe and is inspired by the life and work of the Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar.

 This slice of kitchen sink noir tells Dunbar’s story in print for the very first time. Featuring a cast of real and imagined characters, it is the result of four years’ painstaking research that has unearthed the hidden story of one of the North’s most enigmatic figures. It is a tale of the North / South divide and reveals how a shy teenage girl defied the circumstances she was born into to become one of West Yorkshire’s greatest dramatists.

Set in the Thatcher era, it maps the extraordinary rise of a young woman from the Buttershaw estate, who is discovered via a Women’s Aid refuge. She is propelled into the London theatre establishment and an adapted screenplay of two of her early plays brings her wealth, accolades and notoriety, while raising three young children.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too! is a national scandal upon its release, and its tagline ‘Thatcher’s Britain with Her Knickers Down’ ensures it is a box office sensation. Fame brings anxiety however, and Dunbar is unable to cope with the media attention, pressures of family life and writer’s block. She slowly succumbs to the pitfalls of drink and spends her last days in her local pub The Beacon, where she completes her final script based on a gang of unscrupulous debt collectors. In 1990, aged 29, she collapses from a fatal brain haemorrhage.

One of the most important writers of her generation, this remarkably stubborn ‘genius straight from the slums’ recorded the everyday realities of working-class life. Dunbar’s unflinching autobiographical plays included themes of domestic violence, underage sex, poverty, racism, alcoholism and the declining status of men. By using frank and expletive-ridden dialogue she created a no-holds-barred account of the underclass composed in the tradition of social realism.

A bittersweet literary depiction, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile explores a world whose themes are more relevant today than ever. It marks the arrival of one of the UK literary underground’s best kept secrets.

Adelle Stripe was born in 1976 and grew up in Tadcaster. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester University and is the recipient of the 2016 K Blundell Award for Fiction. She teaches at MMU.

Adelle is the author of three chapbook collections of poetry, the most recent, Dark Corners of the Land, was 3:AM Magazine’s Poetry Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in publications in the US and UK including The Guardian, Stool Pigeon, Caught by the River, Penny Dreadful and Chiron Review.

Her prose-poem The Humber Star will feature at Hull City of Culture 2017 as part of John Grant’s North Atlantic Flux programme. She has recently recorded vocals and lyrics for production duo Smagghe & Cross. Their experimental ambient track Cock of the North will be released in spring on Offen Music.

Find out more at: 

www.adellestripe.com

 

AUGUST 

Spit and Hiss 

by Mike Watts 

 

m w

photo by Jerome Whittington

Spit and Hiss is the fourth collection by Hull born poet Mike Watts. As well as carrying Mike’s trademark brutal honesty and hardboiled insight, these poems betray a deeper and more lyrical maturity to Mike’s current way of looking at the world. From corrupt local councillors and lost weekend lovers to memories of youthful exuberance and present-tense mid-life panic, all life is here, in all it’s marvellous bare- arsed glory.

Here’s a little taster, a poem called Let The Good Times Roll, which has been selected for publication in The Morning Star:

 

Let The Good Times Roll

 

His tearful mug crumbling from the front page of the local rag,

the political candidate swore-blind he’d been punched

simply for posting his party’s propaganda.

 

Turns out he was being economical with the facts,

 

the alleged ‘man-mountain’ of an assailant insisting he

didn’t take a swing at all,

 

he merely objected to having unwanted junk posted

through his letterbox and attempted to return it

by pushing it back into the posters pocket.

 

The candidate assumed it would be good publicity if he

reported it,

so the local press sent out a team to capture HIS version

of events.

 

The paper has an on-line comments section.

It stirred-up quite a debate.

 

Some said the guy was probably an unemployed thug

whilst others defended him.

 

Personally, I think the political candidate is a weasel

(I think most of them are)

and in this town I think he got off pretty lightly,

considering his politics.

 

This crappy bull-shit no-news story made front page,

so obviously all is well;

 

diminishing crime rate, zero unemployment and

the local economy booming.

 

Quick, pour the cognac, light the fire-works,

pass the cigars;

at last, we’ve cracked it!

 

In other news, Mike has just had a poem “Yorkshire Princess” selected in this year’s “Anthology Of Yorkshire Poetry”. 

 

 

SEPTEMBER 

 

International Poetry Collection … TBC (!) 

 

 

OCTOBER 

We Know What We Are

Short stories by Russ Litten 

 

RUSSPHOTOPAINTING

painting by Mark Hebblewhite

 

The debut short story collection from the author of “Scream If You Want To Go Faster”, Swear Down” and “Kingdom”. This latest batch of tales are all centred in and around Hull in the year 2017 and feature a cast of citizens whose lives play out in the furthest edges of the penumbra of the City of Culture spotlight. 

 

Here’s a short excerpt from “The Light That Lights The Dark”, which previously appeared in “Pearl” in the USA and “Verbal” in the UK. 

He gets up before you, goes downstairs and lays the table; a plate of toast with the margarine at two o’clock, the jam at three o’clock, a mug of tea on the right hand side and the knife on the left. You sit and eat together and talk about the day ahead. He tells you that it looks like it’s going to be a nice day outside and you should both go for a walk, blow away the cobwebs. When you’ve finished breakfast he runs you a bath and holds your hand as you step in. He washes and conditions and rinses your hair and then goes through to the bedroom and lays your clothes out on the bed from left to right; knickers, bra, fishnets, the long multi layered black and mauve skirt, the black satin bustier, your favourite mesh top. Then he gets himself dressed and flicks through the TV channels until you call for him to help you out of the water.

   And when you’re dressed he blow-dries your hair, your head between your knees as the heat roars around your scalp. Then the backcombing, the gentle tugging and teasing of his fingertips and then the throat catching blasts of hairspray, the mist settling on your spikes like a sticky net. He sits you down in front of the mirror and does your make up. The cold lick of foundation and the tickle of the brush on your cheeks and forehead. He describes the colours he’s using around your eyes, the purples and the greys and the greens and then falls silent as he leans in closer and concentrates on drawing in the lines around your eyes, the arch of the brows and the cat lick at each corner, his warm breath at the side of your face.

   I’m getting good at this, he says, and you say that you’ll be the judge of that.

 

NOVEMBER 

 

Debut Poetry Collection from exciting northern punk poet … TBC! 

 

We’ve also got amazing short story and poetry collections coming up from some very exciting new and established names. But that’s not until next year. In the meantime, if you want to get on the Wrecking Ball Press Book Club and take advantage of our ludicrously generous nature, please follow this link here:

 

https://wreckingballpress.com/product/wrecking-ball-press-book-club/

 

In the meantime, steer by the light of the whalebone and look after each other. 

WBP

x

 

 

The Feel-Good Hit Of The Summer!

The heart goes boom cover JPEG

 

Here at Wrecking Ball Towers, we love a bit of existential angst just as much as the next lit fiend. Indeed, our shelves are crammed full of it – worry, doubt, paranoia, nausea, complaint are all present and correct. But even the most hardened modernist needs to throw the curtains back and allow a sunbeam of hope to come dancing into their lives. Allow us to introduce Alex Green and his wonderful debut novel, The Heart Goes Boom.

   The Heart Goes Boom is essentially a quest novel – the quest for true love. Yes, that old chestnut; but hold your horses, this is not just any old bog standard Mills and Boon Moon in June guff we’re talking about here. This is the kind of true love that hits you square in the chest and sends your very essence vibrating to the rhythm of the universe. The kind of true love that makes magic happen.

   It’s the kind of true love that makes your heart leap out of your chest and take flight into eternity.

   After his girlfriend pushes him through a fortune-teller’s window, fading TV star Kieran Falcon realizes his life needs to take a decisive turn. Aided by an assorted cast of eccentrics, mavericks and outright maniacs – including a wise man writer, a silver-eyed magician and The King Of Love Himself – Kieran sets off on an epic quest for true love and immortality.

   Alex Green’s writing is smart and snappy and full of joy. If you only take one book onto the beach to read this summer, make it this one. The Heart Goes Boom will make you laugh. It will also confirm your faith in the restorative power of love.

   There. That didn’t hurt, did it?

THE WRECKING BALL SWINGS

wrecking ball swinging

 

 

“The Wrecking Ball has been wire-brushed and oiled. I gave it a little push this morning and when I last looked tonight it was still moving. I think we have momentum …”

Stacked on my desk are eight manuscripts. Very soon they will be primped, polished, printed and bound and sent spinning out into the world. Individually, they are among the most vital and refreshing blasts of poetry and prose you will come across in this or any other country. Collectively, they form the Wrecking Ball list of 2015. And what a list it is. From the swaying golden cornfields of Indiana to the prison cells of London, from a 10 am hangover in Aberystwyth to a swimming pool in the middle of the night in Hull, here are stories demanding to be told from voices beautiful, brutal and bizarre.

Brace yourself – the Wrecking Ball is swinging and it’s headed straight to you.

RELEASED IN 2015

Pete Knaggs – You’re So Vain You Probably Think This Book Is About You

Pete Knaggs’ poetic landscape is populated by the tender and the surreal, the deranged and the dislocated: quietly seething factory workers, domestic mermaids in bath chairs, foot fetishists in Scunthorpe book shops, exuberant van drivers blasting Showaddywaddy on the tape deck. Welcome to a world that holds a fractured mirror to the seemingly mundane scenery around us, a singularly slanted worldview that imbues the everyday with a deliciously skewed and subtle magic. All life is here. You may not think this book is about you – but it probably is.

celeste doaks – Cornrows and Cornfields

Cornfields and Cornrows is a heartfelt journey from the childhood fields of Indiana to the glittering metropolis of North America. Spinning together memory, popular culture and personal politics, celeste doaks makes words dance, weep, wail and sing – often in the space of just a couple of lines. This sublime collection of delightfully bold and vivid poems burn upon the mind’s eye long after the final page is turned.

Cliff Forshaw – Pilgrim Tongues

Dense, rich and complex this collection draws on a fertile heritage of myth and legend, evoking lands long forgotten and landscapes rendered new by this most modern and lyrical of voices.

 Kath McKay – Collision Forces

This beautifully intricate collection betrays a gimlet eye for detail and a huge passion for the tiny dramas of everyday life. Kath McKay’s dense and fragmentary lines recount the quiet firestorms that fuel human relationships and the seismic reverberations that can often ensue.

 Niall Griffiths – “Red Roar – 20 Years of Words”

A giant of modern literature, Niall Griffiths’ first poetry collection is every bit as exhilarating as his celebrated novels. Culled from two decades of notebooks, diaries and the sodden backs of beermats, “Red Roar – 20 Years of Words” celebrates Griffith’s journey towards ecstatic redemption through language. Here is poetry that strips the human experience back to its barest bones and exposes the raw and unflinching essence within.

 Russ Litten – Kingdom

A stranger appears out of nowhere in a prison library and assaults a guard. Locked in solitary confinement, he relates his story to a listener over the course of one night. Kingdom, the third novel from Russ Litten, spins together magical realism and hard-boiled psychodrama into a heartbreaking urban fable of human awakening. Ghosts may not exist – but sometimes they are real. Do you believe in life before death? 

 Andy Fletcher – How To Be A Bomb

Fuelled by mind as sharp as a scalpel and a heart bigger than the Humber, Andy Fletcher’s poetry ranges from simple, stark, haiku-like lines to rambling dreamlike prose, by turn both delightfully surreal and as clear as a raindrop caught by sunlight. You will return to these words again and again and be rewarded with something fresh and arresting at each visit. 

Alex Green – The Heart Goes Boom

Take a fortune teller, a has been TV soap star, a wise man and a writer and a silver eyed magician. Set them on a quest for true love and immortality. Make the road ahead fraught with mishaps and mayhem, with unforgettable characters at every turn. Make it funny. Make it really funny. “The Heart Goes Boom” is the most joyous, life-affirming story you will read this year.