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Published 21st April 2025. Available for pre-order.
Kitty Hawkins' first collection These Yellow Days is haunted by the birth and death of an idealised adulthood. Its extinction, in the form of a dead woman, haunts the poems, observing erosion, dunescapes, femininity, rebirth. Set largely in the blustery yet desolate expanses of a coastal landscape, These Yellow Days uses speculative and imaginative juxtapositions as a means of rewriting memories, particularly interactions with those the poet holds most dear. A ghost-like water leaks through the pages, giving and taking life simultaneously. What remains is the sharp and vulnerable, which, like an onshore breeze, scours the natural for hope. "Kitty Hawkins' debut collection is a masterclass in the creation of intimate and beguiling poetic snapshots. She gently draws readers into the quietly glowing world of each poem through rich and precise imagery. We ramble through seemingly inconspicuous landscapes with fresh eyes: nettles kiss shins, houses are the colour of sand, seals are distant commas, fog roams through alleyways and laptops whine with the sea's voice. The poems explore our complex humanity and confront loss and trauma with a refreshing honesty: “it's unbearable to think alone,†the poet laments. But even if we are “just atoms contemplating atoms,†in Hawkins' capable hands we are in very good company' — SUE BURGE "These poems keenly sense the atmosphere of place, from the coasts of East Anglia to the streets of Reading. This is not a sanitised vision: as Hawkins writes, “there's a violence to the landscape†and its human stories; but she also focusses our attention on the vigorous, irrepressible life that animates coastal plants, pavement cracks and sea mists. “When my tongue tastes the wet air there is nature in everything†– and this collection shows us, with precision and economy, just how what's wild and strange is entangled with the everyday'
Kitty Hawkins' first collection These Yellow Days is haunted by the birth and death of an idealised adulthood. Its extinction, in the form of a dead woman, haunts the poems, observing erosion, dunescapes, femininity, rebirth. Set largely in the blustery yet desolate expanses of a coastal landscape, These Yellow Days uses speculative and imaginative juxtapositions as a means of rewriting memories, particularly interactions with those the poet holds most dear. A ghost-like water leaks through the pages, giving and taking life simultaneously. What remains is the sharp and vulnerable, which, like an onshore breeze, scours the natural for hope. "Kitty Hawkins' debut collection is a masterclass in the creation of intimate and beguiling poetic snapshots. She gently draws readers into the quietly glowing world of each poem through rich and precise imagery. We ramble through seemingly inconspicuous landscapes with fresh eyes: nettles kiss shins, houses are the colour of sand, seals are distant commas, fog roams through alleyways and laptops whine with the sea's voice. The poems explore our complex humanity and confront loss and trauma with a refreshing honesty: “it's unbearable to think alone,†the poet laments. But even if we are “just atoms contemplating atoms,†in Hawkins' capable hands we are in very good company' — SUE BURGE "These poems keenly sense the atmosphere of place, from the coasts of East Anglia to the streets of Reading. This is not a sanitised vision: as Hawkins writes, “there's a violence to the landscape†and its human stories; but she also focusses our attention on the vigorous, irrepressible life that animates coastal plants, pavement cracks and sea mists. “When my tongue tastes the wet air there is nature in everything†– and this collection shows us, with precision and economy, just how what's wild and strange is entangled with the everyday'
