Greyhound Night Service

I have finally dusted the last remaining cobwebs of my PhD out of my study, and right in time for an important arrival in the post: a beautiful box of books, Greyhound Night Service, my new pamphlet now out with Maquette!

I am thrilled to have found such a fitting home for the poetry that has long-preoccupied my imagination. When I came upon the submissions page at Maquette, and the following statement, I felt immediately akin to the publisher: 'We have a preference for [...] poems written in sequence, or chapbooks which are a discrete project in themselves.' 

The main flow of Greyhound Night Service is a sequence of poems that were inspired by my journeys down the Chassahowitzka River just off the Gulf Coast of Florida. I spent my childhood not far south of there, yet this specific local river only came into my acquaintance in early adulthood, once I began to investigate further afield and to take voyages into the landscape of Florida that was remote from the cities and suburbs, that was remote from what visitors to Florida usually encounter with Disneyland and other Orlando or Miami destinations. The Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge is feral and lush. It offers an experience of Florida that feels native to me, from a long kayak down the river to the Gulf of Mexico, to swimming in springs dappled with little hidden nooks and streams. Especially taking into account the alligators, the snakes, the extremely large spiders and flying insects.

And for the first decade after moving to the UK, it was still this Florida landscape that drew me back to it every time I was able to visit. I am excited to see these poems all together in print, and I am lucky to have found the work such an apt home from which they can, themselves, move out into the world.

                                                                          ----

'Prepare to be immersed in the heat and vibrancy of Florida's natural world, full of such sensual detail that to read it is to breathe it in. Liz Bahs has written a powerful elegiac love-poem to her Floridian landscape and in a short pamphlet encompasses her rich voyaging through memories of youth and nature towards those other countries of her future.'    ~Jo Shapcott