Description

By Gemma Lees

ISBN: 978-1-84991-469-7
Published: 2011
Pages: 60
Key Themes: poetry, mental health, homelessness, learning difficulties

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Description

In this volume of thirty poems, Gemma Lees deals with many tough issues such as: mental health problems, homelessness, learning difficulties and social decline. The collection, written over a period of seven years includes several new poems. These hard-hitting verses will shock, surprise and stimulate debate on a variety of gritty topics.

About the Author

Gemma Lees was born in 1983 and brought up in Bury in Lancashire. She has graduated twice from the University of Bolton with a BA in Creative Writing and Writing for Stage, Screen and Radio and a PGDE in Adult Literacy. Described as a ‘street poet’, she bases much of her work on the people she meets as well as her own experiences. Gemma teaches creative writing and drama in schools, libraries, theatres and community settings to a variety of ages. She also performs her poetry at a variety of venues across the North West, including; pubs, schools and colleges, libraries, theatres and festivals. Gemma works for the spoken word organisation ‘Write out Loud’ and co-ordinates both their monthly Middleton night and one-off performances. A sufferer of both BPD and OCD, Gemma often struggles with her writing career but her husband and carer is a constant support, in the green room and audience at every gig.

Book Extract

Happy Holidays

It’s all change here
We’ll watch telly in a brand new
Location, location, location
They have different news you know here
And funny foreign soaps
In between the normal English stuff
We’ll drink our tins on stripy chairs
Rubbing factor 5 into hairy backs
On scrubby patches of grass
Or dog shit beaches
While the children fight
And Mum screams she’s had enough
‘Cause the family’s condensed here
Problems are shoe-horned
Into one bed chalets
With fold out couches
For when the kids are asleep
We’ll share a salt air snog here
And smell the frozen seas
On our way to the daily cabaret
The drinks are on me here
We saved up all year
A tiny little bit a week
One less scratch card
One less pack of cigs
To feed the slidey machines here
And buy suggestive rock
And Cha Cha Slide the night away
On endless Bacardi Breezers
A couple of quid less on the ‘lectric
A couple of quid less on the gas
‘Cause next year’s Pontins
Is holding us at PayPoint