Carcanet book launch online: Red Gloves by Rebecca Watts

The latest in Manchester-based poetry press Carcanet’s lockdown launches is the online event for Rebecca Watts’ new poetry collection, Red Gloves. She’ll be reading from the new work (alongside extracts displayed so that you can read along) and discussing it with fellow poet Paul Stephenson, co-curator of Poetry in Aldeburgh and author of three poetry pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days That Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016) and Selfie With Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). Audience members will also have the opportunity to ask their own questions.

Rebecca Watts’ acclaimed 2016 debut The Met Office Advises Caution is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and featured in the Guardian and Financial Times Best Books of 2016 lists. A selection of her poetry was included in Carcanet anthology New Poetries VI the year before.

Rebecca Watts will be reading from the new work (alongside extracts displayed so that you can read along) and discussing it with fellow poet Paul Stephenson

In this follow-up, the Cambridge-based librarian and freelance editor observes and tests the limits of humanity’s engagement with the non-human. Described as: “By turns lyrical and narrative, the poems examine familiar subjects – environmental crisis, hawks, hospitals, the sea, barbecues, flowers, Emily Dickinson – only to find their subjects staring, sometimes fighting, back. Nature and nurture, equally red in tooth and claw, power a book-long sparring match between the overthinking poet and the ever-thoughtless universe, between the craft’s isolation and the world’s irrepressible variety. Gloves on and gloves off, the poet’s hands destroy and build, gather and scatter, caress and strike.”

Both Barbecues (featuring a starring role by Homebase) and Interns (“the air unpresses itself from the ceiling and slowly expands / until it once again touches all seventeen corners of the Work Room”) are firmly rooted in the contemporary everyday (well, until the New Normal was ushered in) looked at with a knowing, sideways glance.

Registration for this online event is £2, redeemable against the cost of the book, available direct from Carcanet at a special price – attendees will receive a discount code and details of how to buy during and after event. Please note that there is a limited number of places for the reading, so do book early to avoid disappointment.