Longship

By Jessica Mayhew

Winner of The Melita Hume Poetry Prize 2018. Longship blurs the boundaries between Norse mythology and the modern world. It assumes the voices of the Gods and Goddesses, and weaves them through stories of love, death and nature today. It is set in the now, but calls back to your older self and communications with nature, ‘feeling the night / come on like a bruise, a gentle harm.’ Longship is a book of craft, beauty and vision.

Jessica Mayhew’s first pamphlet, Someone Else’s Photograph, was published by Crystal Clear Creators in 2012. After graduating from UCL with a Masters in
English Literature, Jessica Mayhew spent a year working in south-east Asia, and during this time wrote a pamphlet, Amok, which was published by Eyewear Publishing in 2015. Her poetry, fiction and essays have been published in magazines including Ambit, Stand, Staple, Brittle Star, Magma, and The Interdisciplinary Literary Studies Journal. She has also given readings at the Nottingham and Ledbury Poetry Festivals. Jessica currently lives in Hertfordshire
with her street dog, Bracken.

"This outstanding first collection brings a blaze of insight...The language is dateless, direct. In the piercing isolation of the last word of ‘Helroad’, the reader senses how deeply Mayhew has entered these once-remote stories. " - Alison Brackenbury