Comrades of Dark Night is Coming
March 4, 2026Reading time: 3 minutes
This is my stock cupboard, with the two books still in print - Haggards and The Well of the Moon. As you can see, I have many copies available - my publisher Red Squirrel Press is celebrating twenty years in business, which involves revamping her website and making room for the exciting ventures she has in prospect, so, although the old books are selling well, if you want a copy, you need to buy them here.
Please do - I need to clear space myself, because soon there will be the new book, Comrades of Dark Night. The exciting phase of getting it out has started as we hope to have news of an event in the first week of May in my next post, but work is under way on the cover, and I am looking for reading opportunities and potential reviewers.
I have a deep love for this collection. It was written during a time of intense upheaval, not only for me but for all of us, and though I really didn't want to write a 'pandemic book', it is inevitably marked by the traumas we all went through, the changes we wanted to make, or failed to make, the losses, the discoveries, the shifts in values and awareness we all went through.I think this is the most human-centred of my books. There are plenty of herb poems and landscape poems, the usual rain, weeds and rivers and seasonal changes as you might expect, but really I wanted to focus on the process of shift and settling, the way we get to know new places, the way we begin to feel we belong, what we bring with us, our growing awareness of who - and what we find there. It is less about getting to know, more about letting ourselves be known, and it's a very uncomfortable process. We not only observe, but we are observed, and sometimes judged.
There are poems that deal with discovery, but also projection, rules and barriers, but also welcome. And there are poems about conflict, loss and uncertainty, but also about solidarity and the processes of communication and creativity. The 'dark night' reference may feel appropriate, and we meet some dangerous characters along the way, but I'd like to think it emerges in a place of healing.
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