The Broken Spine (SUBS OPEN)

Catch up on everything Broken Spine: open + upcoming submission windows, latest releases, and all the links you need in one place. linktr.ee/brokenspinea... Updated, organised, no faff.

What does Brutalism sound like as poetry? Concrete. Repetition. Function. Weight. Then put people inside it. HIGH-RISE takes the uncompromising aesthetic of Brutalist architecture and looks for the human lives behind the walls. shorturl.at/1xJGD

#PoemsAbout #Haunted starts Friday. Not every ghost is dead. Write the person still living in your head. The house that remembers. The mistake that learnt your address. Draft now. Share from Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

A century is long enough to stop treating a classic politely. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS talks back to Gatsby. Wealth. Aspiration. Exclusion. Obsession. Desire. The green light hasn't gone anywhere. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

Today we practice attention as care. It’s #LiftToTheSky.

BACK FROM THE SPINE. Concrete. Alienation. Survival. Lives lived behind walls built to last longer than the people inside them. HIGH-RISE: BRUTALIST POETRY, edited by Alan Parry. Published before. Worth reading now.

Halloween week. Obviously we weren't going to behave. Next up: #Haunted. Ghosts, if you like. But also old rooms. Dead friendships. Living people. Mistakes with excellent memories. New theme begins Friday. Don’t post early. Use Alt Text. Tag #PoemsAbout. Read. Repost. Reply.

Good poetry doesn't expire. LAST LIGHT was published before. Its questions about environmental collapse, human fragility and our capacity for self-destruction haven't gone anywhere. Neither has the book. Discover something you missed.

“we can do it all in this slant of night until the last song when time destroys all things” From “Rainbow Room Waltz” by Alan Parry He/Him Morning always arrives. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

#PoemsAbout #Hollow is live. Find the empty space and make it speak. Post from today through Thursday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text. #TakeRisks #EndOnAnImage #AvoidCliché Read 3+. Repost. Reply.

After the sirens. After the smoke. After everyone has stopped pretending things can go back to normal. What remains? LAST LIGHT: APOCALYPSE POETRY explores endings both imagined and painfully real. shorturl.at/hFE9K

Tomorrow: #PoemsAbout #Hollow. Don't describe the emptiness. Show us what used to be there. Don’t post before Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

Demand beautiful books. Ambitious editing. Writers taking risks. Something worth keeping. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS is one of ours. And we're bloody proud of it. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

Forget the spectacular apocalypse for a moment. What about the last bird? The ruined landscape? The empty house? The person who realises something has ended before anybody else does? LAST LIGHT is poetry for the quieter catastrophes too.

#PoemsAbout #Hollow starts Friday. Write the empty centre. The abandoned room. The promise with nothing behind it. The body carrying an absence. Draft now. Share from Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

“A silky velvet evening bag With sequins that twinkled.” Then: “The soft pouch full of sick.” From “Message From the Stars” by Clive Donovan. That's BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

#LiftToTheSky is a reminder that visibility can be shared.

Apocalyptic literature has always asked what happens when the structures holding our lives together fail. That question hasn't exactly become less relevant. LAST LIGHT: APOCALYPSE POETRY. Contemporary poets writing from the edge.

Next up: #Hollow. Trees. Promises. Victories. People. Places where something used to live. New theme begins Friday. Don’t post early. Use Alt Text. Tag #PoemsAbout. Read. Repost. Reply.

BACK FROM THE SPINE. We're digging into The Broken Spine's Slimline Series and putting these books back where they belong: in front of readers. Next up: LAST LIGHT: APOCALYPSE POETRY, edited by Alan Parry. Published before. Worth reading now.

Small press shouldn't mean disposable books. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS is a hardback because poetry deserves permanence. Design matters. Paper matters. The object carrying the writing matters. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

#PoemsAbout #Possessed is live. Lose control. Post from today through Thursday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text. #TakeRisks #EndOnAnImage #AvoidCliché Read 3+. Repost. Reply.

The world can end without anybody noticing. A death. A departure. A diagnosis. A landscape disappearing. One person's apocalypse while the buses keep running. LAST LIGHT moves between the universal catastrophe and the devastatingly private one.

Tomorrow: #PoemsAbout #Possessed. Something has got hold of you. Stop pretending it hasn’t. Don’t post before Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

“Maraschino bleeds in a glass” From “Dip” by Sarah O'Grady. Cocaine. Cigarettes. Jazz. Cocktails. Dawn. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS gives you the party — then follows the glamour somewhere much darker. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

We like imagining apocalypse as something that happens to us. LAST LIGHT is also interested in something uglier: our role in causing it. Poems about fragility, environmental collapse, annihilation and the human fingerprints left at the scene.

#PoemsAbout #Possessed starts Friday. Write obsession. Ownership. Haunting. The thought you can't put down. The person you can't get out. Who possesses whom? Draft now. Share from Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

The American Dream looks terrific from the ballroom. Try looking from the factory floor. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS asks who made the clothes, poured the drinks, accumulated the money — and paid for the party. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

It’s Monday. Who are you reading, supporting, or learning from? Lift them. #LiftToTheSky

No zombies required. Apocalypse is climate. War. Extinction. Grief. The collapse of something you thought permanent. LAST LIGHT asks contemporary poets what the end of a world looks like from inside it.

Next up: #Possessed. By love. By rage. By money. By memory. By the thing in the dark that absolutely promised it wasn't there. New theme begins Friday. Don’t post early. Use Alt Text. Tag #PoemsAbout. Read. Repost. Reply.

“opulence, pearlescence, obsession” Then: “it’s only oyster snot, that’s all.” From “Random Arms” by Laura Cooney. Beauty. Value. Desire. Illusion. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

Angela Graham. Clive Matson. Amaleena Damlé. Just some of the voices gathered in LAST LIGHT: APOCALYPSE POETRY. Different poets. Different endings. One uncomfortable question: What have we done?

#PoemsAbout #Bites is live. Bare your teeth. Post from today through Thursday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text. #TakeRisks #EndOnAnImage #AvoidCliché Read 3+. Repost. Reply.

We wanted BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS to look gorgeous. Of course we did. It's a book about glamour. But glamour gets interesting when you ask what it's hiding. A beautiful hardback with teeth. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

There can be beauty at the end. That's what makes it worse. LAST LIGHT moves between environmental devastation, personal loss and the strange beauty of final things. Poetry standing at the edge and refusing to look away.

Tomorrow: #PoemsAbout #Bites. What sank its teeth into you? Better question: what did you bite back? Don’t post before Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

“Bones of child labor thrown away – unbeautiful uneasy” From “Decadence Built This” by Karen Pierce Gonzalez Look at the glitter. Then look at who paid for it. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

What do you save when the world is ending? Who? What do you regret? And what if the thing destroying it was us all along? LAST LIGHT: APOCALYPSE POETRY, edited by Alan Parry.

#PoemsAbout #Bites starts Friday. Love bites. Winter bites. Words bite. Animals bite. Hunger makes its own rules. Show us the teeth — or just the mark they left. Draft now. Share from Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

#LiftToTheSky Monday asks for generosity, not perfection.

This isn't Gatsby fan fiction. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS treats the novel as cultural evidence. Class. Labour. Sex. Money. Desire. Myth. Cut the seams. Steal the thread. Make something new. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

Want to lift writers in the indie poetry world? Read them. LAST LIGHT brings contemporary poets together to stare directly at endings — environmental, societal and deeply personal. Small presses publish the books nobody else will. Read them. shorturl.at/hFE9K

Next up: #Bites. Teeth. Hunger. Desire. Warning. The mark left afterwards. And all the things capable of biting without having a mouth. New theme begins Friday. Don’t post early. Use Alt Text. Tag #PoemsAbout. Read. Repost. Reply.

He needs to have a look at #PoemsAbout from @thebrokenspine.co.uk every Friday on this site for inspiration. Nb reading poetry doesn't usually take as much sustained concentration as reading a novel .....Unless it's Paradise Lost or something..

The apocalypse doesn't have to arrive with a mushroom cloud. Sometimes it is environmental collapse. Sometimes a society ending. Sometimes one person's world disappearing while everybody else's carries on. LAST LIGHT: APOCALYPSE POETRY. shorturl.at/hFE9K

Remember books? Weight in your hands. Paper beneath your fingers. A cover you keep looking at. Poems you return to. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS is a proper hardback made to last. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks

#PoemsAbout #Rot is live. Let something stink. Post from today through Thursday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text. #TakeRisks #EndOnAnImage #AvoidCliché Read 3+. Repost. Reply.

If you like our #PoemsAbout prompts, you should be reading the poets we publish. #BlackSky. #NoFuture. #AfterTheSirens. #WhatRemains. #EndOfSummer. LAST LIGHT lives somewhere beyond all of them. Apocalypse poetry for uncertain times. shorturl.at/hFE9K

Tomorrow: #PoemsAbout #Rot. Forget fresh flowers. Give us the vase a fortnight later. Don’t post before Friday. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text.

Some books you read. Some you want to own. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS is a gorgeous hardback built to be held, kept and revisited. Then you open it, and the glamour starts coming apart. Edited by Alan Parry He/Him & Karen Pierce Gonzalez shorturl.at/126Ks