what is near

[P]oems like delicate essays, in the sense of attempts-circling, being-with, tentative and tender [...] poems like seed heads, fragility and delicacy, balanced, a symmetry [...] seeding more thinking [... a tender] engagement with moss, air, horizon, the political, the scientific, the human, the non-human and the spaces-between where these things meet. The space on the page, within the poems, and between the poet writing and the world observed, is so delicately balanced.- Dr. Kim Lasky- Chris Drury[an exploration of] the political, the specifics of natural things (eg. birds, moss, trees, landscape), boundaries and spaces; and the sense of place, all with sensuality and infinite sensitivity, including the self and its relationship to nature. We were especially aware of how [the poems] handle the very contemporary sense of language with all its problems of reference [exploring] the interconnectedness of all things through linguistic and visual means.- Professor Peter Abbs & Dr. Lisa Dart
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Kay Syrad is a poet, novelist and editor based in East Sussex. She has two poetry collections with Cinnamon Press: What is near (2021) and Inland (2018), and another with Pighog, Double Edge (2012). Kay also has two novels with Cinnamon: The Milliner and the Phrenologist (2009/2012) and Send (2015). She was Poetry Editor of Envoi 2014-2020 and writes articles and reviews for a range of journals. Kay often collaborates with artists: she was the commissioned writer on 'Last Station', a multi-media art project exploring the history of British lightships, writing a libretto for a choral piece with composer Trevor Watts, and creating a limited edition book, work of the lightship men: 1000 tasks (2014), which was purchased by the National Maritime Museum. Her art-text work, Exchange, with environmental artist, Chris Drury, is published by Little Toller (2015), and as one half of the composite eco-poet kin'd & kind (with Clare Whistler) she has published a chapbook, h/edge (Elephant Press, 2021) and edited several eco-poetry anthologies, including Wild Correspondings: a source book (also Elephant Press, 2021).