Books

Poetry books for children, teens & young adults

You Are Not Alone

Troika, 2023
ISBN 978-1-912745-17-3
Teen/YA | Paperback | 128pp
£8.99

Do your emotions feel like mosquitoes  one minute and breakbeats the next? Does your mind behave like a cross between a cloud and a bulldozer?  Have you ever said ‘fine, thanks’ when how you really feel is heartsick and helpless? Have you bent yourself so far out of shape in the hope of fitting in that you’ve lost touch with who you are? Read these poems and know that you are definitely not alone.

A National Poetry Day Recommendation 2024 | Selected for Empathy Lab’s Read for Empathy Collection 2024

“Reassuring and hopeful, sometimes heartbreaking yet also uplifting, inspiring and accessible… this book acts like a safety harness on this rollercoaster of emotions. It should be on every teenage shelf, there to pick up, laugh and cry with.” – Maggie Still, The Scotsman

“A triumph – daring, surreal, rich with ideas – exploring teen and young adult life in potent poetry without patronising.” – Pie Corbett

Hop over to www.troikabooks.com/you-are-not-alone for more details including a video trailer, a few sample poems, some video-poems and free teaching resources.

Saturdays at the Imaginarium

illustrated by Judith Wisdom

Troika, 2020
ISBN 978-1-912745-12-8
7+ years | Paperback | 96pp
£7.99

“Inventive, provocative and highly original”, Saturdays at the Imaginarium celebrates creative thinking and encourages curiosity, revelling in the pleasure of looking at things ever so slightly slant. Thoughts whizz around like mosquitoes, a day lasts longer than a year and the weather report forecasts an ear-to-ear grin nearly two miles high.

A National Poetry Day Recommendation 2021 | Shortlisted for the North Somerset Teachers’ Book Award 2021 | Nominated by the Twitter book community for a BookBlether ‘Hidden Gems’ award.

“A beautiful balancing act of the surreal and the graspable, the everyday and the out-of-sight in-the-mind. And always there’s a light in the window to guide you to a home you never imagined before.” – A.F. Harrold

“A feast of wonder, possibility, defiance, strength and awe. There is such daring, such positivism… wordplay, poetic skill and imagination burst from this power packed poetry debut.” – Bookwagon

Visit www.troikabooks.com/saturdays-at-the-imaginarium for more info including a video trailer, some sample poems and a free teaching resource. There’s also Imaginarium extras with blogs and some more creative resources.

Poetry chapbooks for adults

“A chapbook is a small collection of poetry, generally no more than 40 pages, that often centers on a specific theme, such as exotic foods or wild animals or Justin Bieber.” – Writers’ Digest.

Sorry, no exotic foods or Justin Bieber here (but maybe some wild animals).

Love Bites

Dancing Girl Press (USA), 2019

Bite: to take hold of; to cut or pierce, as if with an edged weapon.

“During an average kiss, 40,000 parasites
are transmitted along with nine milligrams of water,
some fat, protein, salt
and 250 species of bacteria.
Love explains this each time we embrace.
It makes him feel heroic.”

“Turns out Love is 72.8% water.
Is it any wonder some days
I feel so diluted.”

Blueprints for A Minefield

Fair Acre Press, 2016

How far would you go to attract, hold onto, or lose a lover? Here are suitors marrying trees, trying their luck with Jesus and taking mortal risks on a trapeze. James Dean returns from the dead. A fish covets a bicycle. Will anyone find their green grass, their grapefruit moon?

“In these emotive reflections on modern relationships, the formal range – from sestina to prose poem to playscript to Oulipo-inspired textual experiment – is dazzling.” – Jonathan Edwards, 2014 Costa Book Award winner

“Full of standout poems – sometimes heartbreaking, often funny… wholly original.” – James O’Leary, Sabotage Reviews

“If Alice wanted to impress the Queen of Hearts with poetry, this is the book she would read.” – David Troman, Orbis