Let Me Carry That For You: an evening of poetry with Saskia McCracken

Saskia McCracken is at Typewronger Books on Thursday 29 October, launching her new collection Let Me Carry That For You. It's a book launch in the proper sense: readings, a Q&A, and a signing, with poet JL William also on the bill.

Let Me Carry That For You works its way through the complicated ground between maternity and family history. It swings from the darker side of things—generational guilt and ecological mourning—to the joy of new life, and in between, the weight of unsolicited remarks from strangers. It's a collection that doesn't shy away from the heavier stuff, but keeps a foot in the everyday.

McCracken is a poet and author represented by Jenny Brown Associates, and this collection follows a steady run of pamphlets: Imperative Utopia, The King of Birds, Cyanotypes, Zero Hours and Common Name. Her work has appeared in Caught by the River, Magma and Tolka, and in anthologies by Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Main Point Books and SPAM press. She's also spent time as a writer in residence at the Knockvologan creative conservation hub and at Eden Arts.

There's more on the horizon, too. Her nature writing debut, Awful Creatures: Encounters with Britain's Misunderstood Animals, is out with Bloomsbury Wildlife in 2027. So this is a good chance to catch her work in person before that one arrives.

The evening runs from 7pm to 9pm at Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN. Admission is free.