ISBN: 9781913437367 

Price: £9.99

Publication date: 19^th May 2022

Format: Paperback

The Telling by Julia Webb is a distinctive and acutely-observed collection of poems that unravel the intricacies at the heart of human relationships. A darkly-humorous tour de force from this Forward Prize commended poet, these poems reveal the things that go unspoken between people, despite their closeness.

In turning her forensic focus on what it is that glues us together or causes us to come apart, Julia Webb’s poetry examines the wreckage and complexities of relationships to understand where the fault lines and fractures lie. What are the stories that construct our family lives, and who gets to tell them? Can we trust the stories we inherit, and what happens when we recover the right to tell things for ourselves? The Telling crackles with the electricity of the uncomfortable and untold, illuminating how we can still love those who hurt us, how we often hurt those we love, and what it is that makes us flawed and human.

About the author:

Julia Webb is a writer, artist, poetry tutor and editor based in Norwich. Her first two collections: Bird Sisters (2016) and Threat (2019) were also published by Nine Arches Press. Her work has been published widely in UK journals and anthologies. In 2011 she won the Poetry Society’s Stanza competition and in 2018 she won the Battered Moons poetry competition. Her poem ‘Sisters’ was highly commended in the 2016 Forward Prize.