A warm and snouting thing: Poems

By Ramona Herdman

'A warm and snouting thing' dances delicately between the sizzle of nerves brought on by proximity to sex and the ambiguous stability of commitment and family. These poems emphasise the physicality, not only of desire, but of the human and natural worlds which surround and shape it: springing ferns, 'saddle-soap / and saddle-sores,' and a vivid scene in which the speaker's mother boils alive 'two huge crabs, rough as roof-tiles' on a holiday with her husband and his lover. Herdman's voice is always precise, even at moments of the most brazen intimacy, whether staring at the backs of men's necks on the Tube across 'a little inch of shared air' or observing the 'patterned' flesh underneath the buttons of a corset. There are tales of teenage self-confidence ('vest tops in April') and adultery averted – but there is space here, too, for a settled life with a salad spinner, and a long-term lover's belly 'warm in its burrow'. The poet skilfully negotiates the twin pulls of the familiar and the unknown, generating a forceful and compelling charge from the energy of flight resisted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Release date: Sep 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912915309

Ramona Herdman

Ramona Herdman’s latest pamphlet, A warm and snouting thing (The Emma Press), was shortlisted in the poetry category of the East Anglian Book Awards. Her previous pamphlet Bottle (HappenStance Press) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. One of her poems was chosen for the Poetry Archive’s WordView 2021 and another won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham prize 2017. Ramona lives in Norwich and is a committee member for Café Writers.

Book preview

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A WARM AND SNOUTING THING

OTHER TITLES FROM THE EMMA PRESS

POETRY PAMPHLETS

Elastic Glue, by Kathy Pimlott

Dear Friend(s), by Jeffery Sugarman

Poacher, by Lenni Sanders

priced out, by Conor Cleary

The Stack of Owls is Getting Higher, by Dawn Watson

SHORT STORIES

First fox, by Leanne Radojkovich

Postcard Stories, by Jan Carson

The Secret Box, by Daina Tabūna

Once Upon A Time In Birmingham, by Louise Palfreyman

POETRY ANTHOLOGIES

Some Cannot Be Caught: The Emma Press Book of Beasts

In Transit: Poems of Travel

Second Place Rosette: Poems about Britain

Everything That Can Happen: Poems about the Future

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

The Head that Wears a Crown: Poems about Kings and Queens

The Girl Who Learned All the Languages Of The World, by Ieva Flamingo

Wain, by Rachel Plummer

The Adventures of Na Willa, by Reda Gaudiamo

POETRY AND ART SQUARES

Now You Can Look, by Julia Bird, illustrated by Anna Vaivare

The Goldfish, by Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi

illustrated by Emma Wright

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THE EMMA PRESS

First published in the

Reviews for A warm and snouting thing

[greeniezona · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a lovely little pleasure of a book. Four and a half stars, but I rounded up. This is a warm and snouting collection — the warm and electric promise of desire and love, with the acknowledgement of danger and loss. The prickliness of both hairs-standing-on-end attraction and also cat-hissing defensiveness. Also the odes to long love, like "Valentine, thirteen years in," which should be in greeting cards.Lovely.