Brighton Launch of 'lamping wild rabbits'

Join Simon Maddrell, Robert Hamberger & Naomi Foyle for readings from Simon's debut poetry collection, lamping wild rabbits, published by Out-Spoken Press.

Out-Spoken Press say:

In Simon Maddrell’s wide and bracing world, childhood orbits the voice of a distant and sometimes dangerous parent. Memories of sex parties, dead friends and estranged lovers straddle the spaces between feeling and thought, loss and fatalism. lamping wild rabbits is a brave and expansive multiverse, exploring sexuality, queer desire, memory recall and testimony. With poems that pay homage to the late Derek Jarman, to verses which situate themselves in and around the Isle of Man, exploring Britain’s colonial presence through the subverted interplay of English and the Manx language.

A polyvocal and multifaceted debut which is unafraid to confront the shame and stigma of HIV, while never allowing the poems to lose shape or pace, altering the lens to bring the reader’s attention to birdsong and the queer body in nature.

Maddrell has achieved a distinct and totally convincing sound through the literary geography of lamping wild rabbits, one that gives the impression it’s been everywhere and returned because it survived.

Robert and Naomi, instrumental in the original manuscript, will be reading favourite poems from a section of the book.
Doors at 7.00pm. Readings from 7.30pm.

A fine, fierce collection, bravely worded, compellingly well put-together.

Neil Bartlett

Refusing repression or denial, Simon Maddrell’s brilliant debut travels compellingly from the constrictions and wildnesses of a queer Manx boyhood, through the early death of a sibling, into enacting an unashamedly sensuous and politicised selfhood in the face of HIV. Generous, questing, irresistible, these miraculous poems root deep to grow towards the sun, transforming their underworlds of loss into an enduring radiance of life.

alice hiller



A queer odyssey, an exquisite and arresting chronicle of the journey from shame to belonging. The skin of these poems are stretched thin and beneath them we glimpse a crystalline world of courage wrought from fear. Bold, surreal, surprising and elegant; this is a breathtaking debut.

Joelle Taylor

lamping wild rabbits from Out-Spoken Press

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