New Chapbook from Ewen Glass

Playful, heartbreaking and formally adventurous, If You Stand in the Corner of the Spare Room You Can Just About See the Sea explores how one understands troubled pasts, domestic presents and futures of great environmental uncertainty, and marks the arrival of a dynamic new voice in contemporary poetry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ewen Glass (he/him) is a screenwriter and poet from Northern Ireland who lives with two dogs, a tortoise and a body of self-doubt. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, his poetry has appeared in Okay Donkey, Abridged, HAD, Poetry Scotland and Belfast Review among many other venues. His debut pamphlet, The Art of Washing What You Can't Touch was published in 2024. His work has been commended or awarded in competitions from the likes of Ware Poets, Scottish Poetry Library, Maria Edgeworth Festival of Literature & Arts and Black Cat Press.


PRAISE FOR IF YOU STAND IN THE CORNER OF THE SPARE ROOM YOU CAN JUST ABOUT SEE THE SEA

"If You Stand In The Corner of the Spare Room [...]is concerned with one of my favourite poetic subjects: that is, the sheer bathos of trying to live through mass ecological death. Rather than confronting the calamity head on, Glass turns his poetic eye to the peripheral, to the useless bureaucracies and inadequate semiotics of late market capitalism. The result is a pamphlet which weaves anecdote with existential ennui, which places its humour on the surface and keeps its despondency peeking out from beneath the carpet. There is linguistic and imagistic dexterity, but there also punchlines, detonated with a gorgeous brio"
— Susannah Dickey, author of Isdal

"Poem after poem, witness the speaker walk headfirst into the fiery rooms of childhood memory, of divorce, custody battles, and emotional debris, rooms that transform into the present-day battles of bureaucracy, insurance premiums, and red tape, even the natural world, threatened by the potential of its own collapse, flooding the proverbial house… this collection delivers on the wisdom of its title, what is spare, neglected, not yet visible, still pulsating, how even the most compromised heartbeat—“I could start a fire!” exclaims the speaker—is charged with an unexpected magic.”
— Susan L. Leary, author of Dressing the Bear

“When your surroundings are eroding and the solutions 'more logo than help,' Glass reminds you to invest in your own myth––that your every movement can start a fire. Important and relatable.”
— Claire Hopple, author of Take it Personally

Click here to purchase “If You Stand in the Corner of the Spare Room You Can Just About See the Sea”