Red Squirrel Press is a new independent publisher based in Northumberland, developing an exciting list of fiction and poetry since its inception in 2006.

Forthcoming titles for 2008 include High Tide, a new novel by Ruth Henderson - a previous winner of the Biscuit International Fiction Prize - and a poetry collection, Stereograms of the Dead by Northern Promise Award winner Alistair Robinson, as well as new poetry collections from James Kirkup and Kathleen Kenny. Red Squirrel is now also the home for the acclaimed Sand poetry chapbook series (previously based in Sunderland), with new work being released in the summer of 2008 by Adam Fish and Stevie Ronnie.

Visit www.redsquirrelpress.com for the current publication list and submission details for fiction.

*

DANCES WITH VOWELS
by KEVIN CADWALLENDER
from Colouring in Guernica (Red Squirrel, 2007)

If I had known that Vowels
Was an anagram of Wolves
Or indeed that Wolves was an anagram of Vowels
I would have written this a long time ago.

I was raised by a pack of vowels.
Five unrelated aunties
Who gathered around my crib
Reciting the incantation
Aaah
Eeee
Aye
Oh
You.

When I said crib there I wanted to say manger
That might mean I have a God Complex
An inner sublimated Christ rising to the surface
However I am an atheist
Which means I don't know if God exists
Not that I don't care if God exists,
I don't know what Jung would have said about that
Maybe he wouldn't care by now.
Jimmy Young would have said TTFN
An acronym devoid of vowels.

I love You Has an awful lot of vowels
Except in Text messages
Where it simply says I LY.

If Little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother
Had been eaten by a vowel I suspect
It would be an 'e.'
I ate an 'e' once but that's a different poem.

I found a bag of consonants in my computer
Just rattling around, I tried to use them
Ffffffff Fffff Kkk
Swearing is rubbish without vowels.
I was raised by vowels

I speak the language
And flatten them like a carpenter making a cross.
My aunts are all dead now nailed into coffins
Howling like Werevowels.