Glut

By Ramona Herdman

Ramona Herdman's Glut is a lush, entertaining, and bittersweet collection of poems about how we live together and find meaning through rules and rituals around food, family, alcohol, work, nature, sex and love. These vividly-realised, nimble poems probe at the delicate balancing acts we – our bodies and our minds – perform in life: between power and trust, between convention and rebellion, and between what is enough and what is too much.
All the time, Herdman's spry poetry keeps a gimlet eye on our impulse to make sense of it all – of how we live and work together, and what strategies will help us to navigate our way through the tangled undergrowth of negotiation and misunderstanding. Glut is a lustrous, darkly funny, open-hearted book on the distance between people, on satisfying appetites, and on seeking both pleasure and consolation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Aug 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913437473

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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Glut

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Glut

Ramona Herdman

ISBN: 978-1-913437-46-6

eISBN: 978-1-913437-47-3

Copyright: © Ramona Herdman, 2022.

Cover artwork: © Jacky Howson, 2022.

www.instagram.com/jackyhowsonartist

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Ramona Herdman has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published August 2022 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by: Imprint Digital

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

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Contents

The centre of the fucking universe

I have to let my lover in under my shield arm

Valentine, 13 years in

First drink of the night

Sunstroke

Jill had two ponies

Blackberrying

The car after the car

The one-day plan

I’ve not yet met a bear but do believe

My latest tactic is trust

Two cats on a Valentine’s card

Cuckoo and egg

Congratulations

Just a small slice?

Labyrinth love list poem

Have you ever said I love you without meaning it?

Precipitation

dear life

Low pain threshold

Creating a culture where We Can Bring Our Whole Selves to Work

M&S lets me know twice

It’s not me taking the minutes

Sick note

Comeuppance

A line of washing

The beekeeper

It won’t be a normal year

Mapping the apples

This is what happens after you die

Subsistence

Hooked

‘Wake up: time to die’

TRIFLE

Self-portrait as cheese board

‘My name is Legion: for we are many’

Come the zombie apocalypse

‘Flown with insolence and wine’

Drinking partner

Ship in a bottle

Mes braves

One of the ways I could fall off the wagon is bacon

Shame

Ever After House

He sits slightly too close and we don’t look at each other

Every time I hear of a swan

Stoat

Ferns

Salad spinner

Two death in the afternoons, please

Small life with cooling rack

Night heart

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

The centre of the fucking universe

I wonder what happened to Martin?

When we were young he gave me

a sea-smoothed stone, as if I loved him,

as