The Emma Press acquires Serge ♆ Neptune’s second poetry pamphlet, Mother Night
The Emma Press is delighted to announce acquisition of Mother Night, the second poetry pamphlet from London-based poet Serge ♆ Neptune.
‘a dark little book that leads to some hope’
Described by the author as ‘a dark little book that leads to some hope’, Mother Night explores surviving sexual assault at a very young age, as a queer individual. The collection forms a séance in which abusive lovers, mothers, and the ghosts of the queers of the past are resurrected in a hallucinogenic dance; the night is the sole soothing presence in a transformative journey that ultimately celebrates the resilience of LGBQT+ people.
Neptune’s proposal was one of two selected from 356 submissions of poetry and prose received in The Emma Press’s July 2022 open call.
Serge ♆ Neptune says:
“The lockdown years have forced me to come to terms with some very grim events of my childhood. This has involved a mentally and physically exhausting process that has lasted years, and has heavily affected how I navigate the world around me, how I relate to language and the body. I am so grateful to the Emma Press team for taking great care of these poems and helping bring this gothic pamphlet to life.”
James Trevelyan, Director (maternity) of The Emma Press said:
“We were deeply struck by Serge’s clear proposal and the powerful poems in Mother Night, which is a pamphlet of strength, truth and tenderness. While the poems cloak the reader in many different darknesses across the short volume, the greatest success and impact of the collection is the way in which it manages to reach for the light. We can’t wait to share it with readers next summer.”
Mother Night will be published in The Emma Press Poetry Pamphlets series in June 2024.
For further information or to request a review copy please contact:
Georgia Wall, Publishing Manager, The Emma Press
About Serge ♆ Neptune
Serge ♆ Neptune has been called ‘the little merman of British poetry’. He is a Faber Academy alumnus and a queer neuro-divergent poet based in London. His first pamphlet, These Queer Merboys, was published with Broken Sleep (2020). His work was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and the Winchester Poetry Competition. Several poems appeared in The North, Propel, The Rialto, Banshee, Magma, Fourteen Poems, and elsewhere.
About The Emma Press
The Emma Press is an award-winning independent publishing house based in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham. It was founded in 2012 by Emma Dai’an Wright and is dedicated to producing beautiful, thought-provoking books for adults and children, and to making poetry accessible to everyone. The Emma Press publishes themed anthologies, illustrated chapbooks and children’s poetry and fiction, with a growing list of translations which includes titles from Latvia, Estonia, Indonesia, Spain and the Netherlands.
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