ISBN: 9781913437404

Price: £9.99

Publication date: 21^st July 2022

Format: Paperback

Extent: 72pp

DCF: Poetry Collections

Peter Raynard’s Manland is a bold, brilliant and outspoken new collection of poems that scrutinise men and manhood, mental health, working class lives and disability. Aloud and alive with music, wit, anger and rebellion, this is an accomplished, politically-aware and vital book.

Raynard is a skilled observer, and these razor-sharp poems document parenthood through the lens of a stay-at-home dad, attempt to tell the truth about men and depression, study our cultural, social and medical relationships with drugs and drug-taking, and lay bare the realities of life at the sharpest edges of society. By turns frank, painful and bleakly funny, this humane and brilliant book encompasses pride and prejudices, the bonds between lads and dads, the toxic pressures of masculinity and the way illness and poverty irrevocably shape lives.

About the author:

Peter Raynard is a disabled working class poet, and editor. Born in Coventry, he now lives in St Albans. He has been widely published in journals and anthologies. His two books of poetry are Precarious, (Smokestack Books), and The Combination: a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto, (Culture Matters), both in 2018. He edited Proletarian Poetry: poems of working class lives, for five years (www.proletarianpoetry.com), featuring over 150 contemporary poets. He was also a member of the internationally renowned collective, Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, and has been an associate editor of Culture Matters. Manland is his second collection.