About...the Editor & Publisher

• Deborah Alma has an MA in Creative Writing, is Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University, & is the Emergency Poet in her vintage ambulance. She is editor of Emergency Poet - an anti-stress poetry anthology & The Everyday Poet - Poems to live by (both published by Michael O’Mara). Her True Tales of the Countryside is published by The Emma Press (2016). Her first full collection Dirty Laundry (May 2018) is published by Nine Arches Press. She has worked using poetry with people in hospice care & in care homes, with vulnerable women’s groups, & with children & taught Writing Poetry at Worcester University. She lives with the poet James Sheard on a hillside in Montgomeryshire.

  THE EDITOR

• Fair Acre Press is an independent publishing house, committed to publishing high quality books and pamphlets that are good to hold, touch, look at and read; books that will call out to you – over and over again. It is run by the wonderfully talented and big-hearted Nadia Kingsley. As well as being the Editor and Publisher at Fair Acre Press, Nadia is a published poet, project manager, short story writer, artist, ceramicist, photographer, sculptor, public speaker, and passionate ecologist. She comes from a medical background, and uses her many talents to create beautiful books and more.

  THE PUBLISHER

About...the Poets

• The following awesome women are included in this anthology: Jill Abram, Vasiliki Albedo, Deborah Alma, Jean Atkin, Roberta Beary, Victoria Bennett, Kaddy Benyon, Ama Bolton, Jhilmil Breckenridge, Rachel Buchanan, Jane Burn, Rachel Burns, Cath Campbell, Louisa Campbell, Zelda Chappel, Rachael Clyne, Jane Commane, Meg Cox, Sarah Doyle, Pat Edwards, Alicia Fernández, Rona Fitzgerald, Kate Garrett, Kathy Gee, Georgi Gill, Roz Goddard, Linda Goulden, Vicky Hampton, Sue Hardy-Dawson, Deborah Harvey, Ramona Herdman, AM Hill, Clare Hill, Angi Holden, Rhiannon Hooson, Helen Ivory, Sheila Jacob, Sally Jenkinson, Jemima Laing, Gill Lambert, Dorianne Laux, Claire Leavey, Emma Lee, Liz Lefroy, Pippa Little, Mandy Macdonald, Maggie Mackay, Holly Magill, Sabrina Mahfouz, Sarah Miles, Sarah Mnatzaganian, Kim Moore, Abegail Morley, Helen Mort, Katrina Naomi, Lisa Oliver, Michelle Penn, Pascale Petit, Bethany W Pope, clare e potter, Wendy Pratt, Lesley Quayle, Kathleen M. Quinlan, Amy Rainbow, Natalie Rees, Jess Richards, Victoria Richards, Bethany Rivers, Rosie Sandler, Jacqueline Saphra, Elisabeth Sennitt Clough, Emily Sernaker, Emma Simon, Beth Somerford, Ruth Stacey, Judi Sutherland, Angela Topping, Cathy Whittaker, Natalie Whittaker, Stella Wulf.

  
  

  At the time of publication, the poets hail from many corners of the world, including Aberdeen, Bristol, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, County Down, County Durham, County Mayo, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Essex, France, Glasgow, Gloucestershire, Greece, Herefordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leeds, Leicestershire, London, New Zealand, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Powys, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Shropshire, Somerset, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, U.S.A., Warwickshire, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Wrexham.

  THE POETS

About...the Artists

• Sandra Salter is the creator behind the cover art and design. She is one half of Salty's Studios, a small creative studio based in Ludlow, Shropshire. Sandra is a Royal College of Art graduate and Bafta nominee, whose projects span moving image to print, hand drawn to digital design, and animation workshops. 

  THE COVER ARTIST

• The book contains seven beautiful B&W illustrations, by Jessamy Hawke. Jessamy is a London and Dorset based illustrator working in ink, watercolour, gouache, and linocut-printmaking. She is interested in connecting drawing with poetry and literature, as well as using illustration and hand-drawn maps to document an experience of a landscape. 

  THE ILLUSTRATOR

• A book of poems about sexual assault and harassment might seem like a tough proposition but #MeToo is a lively and accessible collection. If you have preconceptions, let this book surprise you. It has something meaningful for most readers.

  
  

  Poetry turns out to be an excellent medium to explore these issues. Abusive behaviour can be insidious, often woven into the very fabric of social norms. But a poem gives the necessary space to tug on a thread, to unpick and unravel – and to reveal. The pieces here resonate with vivid details of lived experience, the unmistakably true. Such details reach out of the book, and invite us to reach back in. This clasp of empathy is a deeper way to understand the consequences of abuse, as if from the inside.

  
  

  There are potent moments in #MeToo, but the collective expression is more powerful still. I hope anyone who has found themselves isolated and bullied into silence will find comfort in this community and the affirmation that to speak is not a sin. The collection will also bring clarity to those who have yet to fully articulate their own experience, as Gill Lambert’s striking ‘It Didn’t Mean Me’ deftly sketches the very moment of becoming woke. 

  
  

  By making the unconscious visible, an artwork might also interrupt abusive patterns. Some will read this book and recognise aspects of their own behaviour for the first time. The perpetrator can have a moment of revelation too.

  
  

  For all the galvanising power of social media, hashtag politics are double-edged. We’ve seen how easy they are to co-opt, target, or to filter out. Hashtags can reduce discussion to soundbite, or front-line markers on the battlefield. Worst of all, they become levers we push in the Skinner box of Twitter and Facebook. This anthology gives some headroom to open up and explore. The poets here frequently play with the #MeToo hashtag, most thrillingly in Pippa Little’s riff on Spartacus, which closes out the collection (and compresses into twelve short lines what I’ve struggled with in paragraphs).

   

  Smartly edited by Deborah Alma, #MeToo is strong, engaging, and several thousand years overdue. I urge everyone to get involved.

  Jason Weaver