Simon MAddrell
Simon Maddrell’s poems have appeared in Gutter, Magma, Poetry Wales, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Moth, The Rialto, and Under the Radar.
He has had seven pamphlets published since 2020 including Throatbone, Queerfella and a finger in derek jarman’s mouth. lamping wild rabbits is his debut collection.
Longlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection at the 2026 Forward Prizes
A fine, fierce collection, bravely worded, compellingly well put-together.’ – Neil Bartlett
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 poly-vocal 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.