‘a seashell in a car door’ i love little phrases like this that evoke nostalgia for me. Love is written about in a way that feels new in Ache. i liked the poems of being outside, like a breath of fresh air. i think Ache is a great debut collection of poetry from Scarlett Ward and i will need to read it once or twice more, to fully appreciate and take in the poems. The language is beautiful.

i soon learned

that if you’ve got to hold one nostril

while you’re inhaling to breathe easy

then darling that’s not respiration

that’s recreation

and that shit will kill you

but just never as fast as you’d like

Ache Scarlett Ward

Scarlett Ward is an incredible young West Midlands poet as comfortable on the page as in performance, with a real ear for language and an imagination to match. Her debut collection, created with help and advice from Liz Berry and others, doesn’t disappoint, as it takes its Insta-concerns (Scarlett has 10k+ followers) of depression, insecurity, mental ill-health and the deep and powerful ache of a love found, and turns them in to quite startling poetry -at times as light as petals, at others as heavy and violent as a hob nail boot. Read, gasp, enjoy.

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