Dark Animals: Wild Pressed Young Poets’ Anthology

Dark Animals: Wild Pressed Young Poets’ Anthology features selected poems from fifteen young poets, all within the age-range of 17 to 33. They explore mental health and ways of being, by way of landscape, nature, history and their own lived experience. This collection offers a glimpse into how young writers think and interact with the world, what affects them and how they express it.

The poets in Dark Animals are:

Luke Cable, Keilan Colville, Luca Goaten, Andrew Gooch, Elen Griffiths, April Hill, Rebecca Kane, Arun Kapur, Sian Mitchell, Vaishnavi Parihar, Lauren Ranson, Nia Wyn Roberts, Grace Royal, Natasha Rubins, Hester Ullyart.

Quotes from Dark Animals:

my snaking Humber, sighing out to sea.

Sunken, its mouth hung open

like a python processing prey

as the tide heaves along the riverbed.

–Luca Goaten, from Weapon-Take

Cut against the sea’s spray

her voice rose with purpose, eyes all ablaze.

Votes for all. Vote down this government. Brothers

and Sisters of Solva, lend an ear to the women’s cause!

–Elen Griffiths, from Solva, Sisters

I dream in red velvet,

in cream dusted scarlet,

in shades of warm chocolate,

in the softness of flapjack.

I think of rich tomato

the stretch of mozzarella.

–Grace Royal, from Red Velvet Tomorrow