Offering[s]: Hughes, Chong, Jenkins

‘Offering[s] gathers luminous poems, material objects and asemic markings where the technologies of writing – from ink and honey, to stitching, to typewriter and email – all become radical instruments. Offered in dedication to Redell Olsen, Robert Hampson and twenty years of the Royal Holloway Poetic Practice community, this is a book that attests to the intertextuality of friendship and creative allyship, marking out a common ground of feminist, queer and non-binary lyric. In each work Briony Hughes, E. P. Jenkins and Cat Chong address themselves towards others – to one another, to other poets, creatures and family histories – embodying the generosity of what George Oppen called ‘being numerous.’ Encounter this in the ecological adjacencies of Hughes’ fox and bee poems where ‘hive heavy we of the controversy / … seed-bomb this field together’; in the red stitching of memories and detritus in Jenkins’ gift-poem where ‘fire is a commonality’; or as activated in Chong’s found-text / verbatim / cento assemblages that call on ‘slow connections, dial-up, asynchronous / communication.’ These are offerings to be received, to be held, to be handed on.’ (Rowan Evans)

Offering[s] is a collaborative project celebrating 20 years of Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway. Hughes, Chong, and Jenkins offer a series written, visual, film, performance, and object-based poetic responses to several of the many poets who have emerged from the MA programme, including Sophie Robinson, Prue Bussey-Chamberlain, Astra Papachristodoulou, Karenjit Sandhu, Nisha Ramayya, and J.D Howse. Works documented in the book were originally developed for the 2022 Runnymede International Literature Festival.

On Sale May 2022
Edition of 50 numbered copies. *
ISBN: 978-1-3999-2465-8
The first 15 copies purchased will come with a limited-edition ‘Collisions’ print of Astra Papachristodoulou’s yellow thread **

If you are an international customer please get in touch via email – do not purchase a UK copy***

Briony Hughes is a poet, visiting tutor, and TECHNE PhD candidate based at Royal Holloway, researching hydropoetics. Briony also teaches on the Creative Writing MA programme at Brunel University. She studied toward the Royal Holloway Poetic Practice MA in 2018.  Her publications include Dorothy (Broken Sleep Books), Microsporidial (Sampson Low), and RHIZOME or TAPROOT (Paper View). Her limited edition bookworks have been collected by the National Poetry Library, Senate House Library, and the Kings College London Special Collections. She is a co-founder of the Crested Tit Collective, co-editor of Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology and Editor-in-Chief at Osmosis Press.

E.P Jenkins is a poet based in Kent. She is a teacher and a graduate of Royal Holloway’s Poetic Practice MA. E.P co-edited the Crested Tit Collective anthologies Harpies (2019) and Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology (2020). Her work can be found in: Streetcake Magazine, Osmosis Press, Full House Literary Review, Babel Tower Notice Board and her debut collection Rituals came out this year with Broken Sleep Books. She is co-founder of the Crested Tit Collective and the editor of Coven Poetry.

Cat Chong (they/them) is a poet, publisher, lecturer, and proud queer crip, whose durational work flails wildly between conceptual and confessional tendencies. They’re a graduate of the Poetic Practice MA at Royal Holloway, co-founder of the Crested Tit Collective, and a current PhD student at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Their work has been published internationally by contemporary presses such as Bad Betty, Flint Books, Ache Magazine, Permeable Barrier, Stride, Coven, Vessel, Singapore Unbound, dis/content, Experiment-O, The Babel Tower Notice Board, and Broken Sleep Books. Their debut collection 712 stanza homes for the sun is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books next year.

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