Panic Attacks, a new pamphlet from If A Leaf Falls Press

If A Leaf Falls Press has published Panic Attacks, an assortment of short prose poems that I wrote during panic attacks and other heightened states of anxiety over the years. Talk about a procedurally generated text!

It is a limited edition of 70 pamphlets and can be bought directly from If A Leaf Falls and selected bookshops, including Typewronger, Edinburgh and the London Review Bookshop.

The publisher’s blurb: “Panic Attacks is a sparse, stricken collection of poems-in-prose, like utterances from a solitary outpost. Jinxed, self-questioning, the poems are impossible drafts for some yet-to-be-realised coherence: phone calls when your phone's been stolen, a book that fell off a shelf. The landscape is of shut-down cities, shops that never opened, matches that didn't happen, aerials that resemble human figures, and underneath it a kind of elemental entropy: leaves, drizzle, sleep...”

Thanks to Sam Riviere for helping me bring this odd project to life.

Shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2023

My story “The Storm” has been shortlisted for this year’s BBC National Short Story Award. I am really stoked.

The story will be read by fellow Durbanite Cokey Falkow, and broadcast on Radio 4 on Thursday 14 September at 15:30. There will also be a short interview with me. The story will also be available on BBC Sounds.

The story is as-yet unpublished, but will be collected in a volume by Comma Press with all of the shortlisted stories. This book will be published on 14 September.

Congratulations to the other four shortlisted writers. The winner is announced on Radio 4 Front Row on Tuesday 26 September at 19:15.

Special thanks to Åsa Foster and Sophie Holgersson, who last year invited me to and hosted me at Hedlandet Residens in Sweden, where I wrote this story while looking at an old beech forest. Thank you for allowing me the time and space to write.