The Arena of the UnwellNoah spends his nights drifting between North London pubs and music venues, and his days sleeping off hangovers in the stock room of the floundering record shop where he works. He tries not to think about what will happen when his NHS allocated therapy hours run out and hes left alone with his mind again. After years away, his favourite band Smiling Politely announce a last minute set in a nearby venue and everything starts to shift. When the crowd

George the Poet and Martina Evans

Signed ‘Shalash the Iraqi’

the world of turning over clouds to find the silver lining and scraping graffiti on its cumulus underbelly

I sing for you with the singing voice of the morning cuckoo

and New York City

The likeable speaker of these poems surveys it all with the dry humour and wisdom of an older woman

­— Paul Dash

Pinky Agarwalia discovers fragments of this beguiling text: a mystic toolkit including a cosmology

a Joycean variety of historical Englishes to the accounts of Avatar’s lives and a vivid and persuasive grasp of each historical period

a hospice user

Margaret Drabble

This is a collection about the communities in which we live and the interconnectedness of human beings