Alumnus Julian Stannard to release poetry collection, Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother

Alumnus Julian Stannard (1985, PGCE) is soon to release his new book of poetry, Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother, following the success of his 2020 collection, Heat Wave.

Described as the poet of cabaret, Julian Stannard’s poems are said to both weep and sing as he engages with a scope as wide as the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and personal loss. His poetry demonstrates the power of strangeness and the bizarre, particularly when it comes to loss; across the collection we see a dead brother return on a white horse, a blind boy break into the Kelvingrove Gallery and steal Salvador Dali’s crucifixion, and Ezra Pound as a half man half fish hybrid who rises to the surface of a Venetian lagoon (not to mention the pair of buttocks which escape their owner). A poet of hilarity and wretchedness, he deploys a special type of humour to provide a feast of stories for the reader in this new collection.

Praise for Julian Stannard’s previous work attests to the excited anticipation of his upcoming collection. Karen McCarthy-Woolf described Stannard as a poet who understands the power of satire deployed as political art, whilst Lara Pawson has said that when she reads Stannard’s ‘joyous, astute poems,’ she has an overwhelming desire to share them, ‘even with complete strangers.’

Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother will be published on 15 August 2023 by Salt Publishing. More information about the book can be found here.