Available to pre-order, this book will be dispatched close to publication date, 06/08/26

ISBN: 978-1-916760-44-8

Price: £11.99

Publication date: 6^th August 2026

Format: Paperback / eBook

Territories: World

Extent: 72pp

DCF: Poetry Collections

In 2025, Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for an eighth time, in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Laurie Bolger as selecting editor.

After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist to shortlist, three poets emerged as clear choices: Carl Alexandersson, Rachel Jeffcoat, and Olivia Tuck. Primers Volume Eight now showcases their exceptional and groundbreaking new work in poetry.

About the authors:

Carl Alexandersson is a queer poet based between Glasgow and London, hailing from Småland, Sweden. He was Highly Commended for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2022, a runner-up for the Grierson Verse Prize 2022, and selected for the BBC Words First programme in 2021. His work has appeared in Atrium, streetcake magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, and more. His debut poetry pamphlet Förgätmigej // Forget-me-not was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in 2023.

Rachel Jeffcoat is a Yorkshire-born, Hampshire-based poet and educator whose work has been widely published, including in Poetry Ireland Review, Under the Radar, Banshee, Tears in the Fence and First Aid (Pan Macmillan 2025). She was one of the winners of the 2024 Candlestick Press competition, Poems of Light, has been nominated for Pushcart and Forward Prizes, and was most recently Commended in the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize.

Olivia Tuck’s work has been published by the Poetry Society and Broken Sleep, and in Propel, Under the Radar, Poetry Wales (forthcoming) and Magma (forthcoming). She won the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize, was placed second in the 2023 Jane Martin Poetry Prize awarded by Girton College, Cambridge, and was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. She is an associate editor at Lighthouse.