The Gleaning
(hardback, 132pp)
£14.99 £14 (pre-order price)
UK orders (+ £2.50 postage)
Europe orders (+ £6.85 postage)
Rest of World orders (+ £11.50 postage)
The Gleaning is Fay Musselwhite’s second collection. A beautifully produced hardback, it is published by Longbarrow Press on 30 April 2026; you can pre-order the book securely by clicking on the relevant PayPal button above. Click here to read the opening poem, ‘Crow and Rainbow’.
As the human journey from rural to urban continues, emerging cities grapple with the chaos of burgeoning influx. Whether by circumstance or unscrupulous practices, land, class and nature frequently feature in skirmishes that trespass on the lives and
communities of those who will benefit least from their outcomes.
Floods, freezes, enclosure and gentrification are among the threats rolling in on all sides to divide and exploit the marginalised. At the lean end, some fall by the wayside; others struggle on; others still rise to the challenge and celebrate their lives. Meanwhile, the countryside is further eroded by the hard surfaces and regimented requirements of human priorities.
Land, class and nature run through these poems like family threads or mineral deposits. Stories gleaned from the ever-changing tensions between these enduring forces highlight the movement of populations and the shifting layers of matter on our planet, while revealing ancient legacies that drive the mechanisms of our minds.
Contraflow (hardback, 112pp)
£12.99
UK orders (+ £2.50 postage)
Europe orders (+ £6.45 postage)
Rest of World orders (+ £11 postage)
Contraflow is Fay Musselwhite’s debut full-length poetry collection. You can order the book securely by clicking on the relevant PayPal button above. Visit the Contraflow microsite to read and listen to poems from the book.
The tales that rivers tell have tangled with our own for millennia: before, through, and after the industrial age.
Humans’ rapid migration to towns, often along the course of these waterways, has left many of us bewildered and ill-equipped in an environment at odds with the natural world we depend on. Rivers, bringing the relief of nature to the centres of cities they grew, confront us with forces bare-faced and ancient, seemingly unmoved by our regard. Malleable in their youth, prone to messing about before finding their groove, many were harnessed for mill-work as they matured, and then, like us, after centuries of valuable industry, were abandoned, left to lick their wounds.
All these tales converge in the Rivelin, which rises from peat moorland north-west of Sheffield, and descends 80 metres as it approaches the city. This fast-flowing river, and the valley it etched out, is the setting for many of the poems in Fay Musselwhite’s first collection. Contraflow harnesses these energies to carve its own rugged course, with its bottlenecks, bends and counter-currents: tales that slant, swell and spill.
Longbarrow Press 