‘The Mermaid & The Sailors’: Claire’s debut pamphlet collection

The Mermaid and the Sailors cover

Praise for “The Mermaid and the Sailors”:

‘Claire Askew’s verse can be enjoyed for its playfulness and sharp wit. More rarely, it can also be treasured for its sureness of voice, its rich linguistic texture and deep emotional core. Rooted in the everyday, she has an ability to make the ordinary startling. Often funny, frequently startling in her imagery, she is adept at giving us the surprises, anxieties and estrangements of the modern world. But a series of poems about grandparents, of vividly rendered domestic interiors and Northern landscapes, also haunt with their poignant sense of belonging and loss. The Mermaid and the Sailors offers a procession of poems that have been honed with precision and skill, but which are effortlessly entertaining, echoing in the mind long after one has read them. This generous debut pamphlet confirms that Claire Askew is one of the most distinctive young poets to emerge in Britain in recent years.’

ALAN GILLIS

‘These finely tuned poems, studded with arresting and memorable images, often resonate with loss and longing, absences and distances, yet many are shot through with a wry and sometimes very dark humour which unsettles even as it delights. People’s inner lives come alive in these poised and telling narratives. Claire Askew is a fresh and highly distinctive new voice.’

BRIAN McCABE

‘Askew’s debut pamphlet displays great assurance. Her poems impact immediately, offering brief yet memorable vignettes of quiet lives and moments … one senses a major talent emergent in The Mermaid and the Sailors.’

ROBERT ALAN JAMIESON

‘Claire Askew is a young poet at once cosmopolitan and distinctively northern, with a fine ear for the aptly-placed colloquialism, the unusual word. A skilful and understated user of form, at times she is painterly, allowing sequences of images to play out like stills from a lost reel of footage, and at other times joyously musical, creating an interplay of word-sounds whose sheer energy draws the reader onward. “The Mermaid and the Sailors” is a welcome first publication from a sparky new writer.’

KONA MACPHEE

‘Askew writes with haunting precision, bringing to life the magic and wonder of the things we ordinarily overlook or take for granted. These are poems to savor, poems of electrifying intimacy and startling beauty.’

SAM MEEKINGS

TM&TS is now sold out again! Thank you so much to everyone who bought a copy!

Cover image: Miriam Parker // Cover design: Leon Crosby (leon.a.crosby@gmail.com) // Editor: Kevin Cadwallender // Publisher: Red Squirrel Press