Take a closer look at our Tales from the East box set, which celebrates writing from East Anglia.

Since the launch of our first book, Est, Collected Reports from East Anglia, in 2015, Dunlin Press has been a champion of writing from East Anglia.  Our commitment to publishing fresh and original writing from the region has continued over the years with the publication of two books by East Anglian-based poets, MW Bewick in 2017 and Alex Toms in October this year.

We’ve created a special edition curated box set containing all three books. We’ve also added some extra surprises that will only be revealed when you buy the box set.

In Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia, contributors including filmmaker and novelist Chris Petit, ‘Hookland’ author David Southwell, poets Wendy Mulford and Martin Newell, and a host of other writers, create a kaleidoscopic vision of an East Anglia.

Est is a unique collection of prose, poetry and reportage that spans the Wash to the Thames and the Fens to the German Sea. The texts merge psychogeography, social history, personal memoir and travel writing with discourses on local fable, art, archaeology and conservation. The collection explores the salt marshes and creeks, the sand and shingle beaches, the remains of Roman and Anglo-Saxon dwellings, the giant skies, interior geographies and, perhaps most of all, human histories, to paint an enigmatic picture of East Anglia today – while referencing more than 260 places in the region.

The book has received critical acclaim. Here’s just some of the kind words people have said about the publication…

‘Strange, reflective, memorable and odd as the region itself’
Libby Purves, Country Life

‘Books like Est must be able to be written again by the next generation’
Caught By The River

‘Uniformly excellent… well-edited, well designed, and unbreakable’
Ken Worpole, author of The New English Landscape

Scarecrow is the debut poetry collection of poet and Dunlin Press co-founder MW Bewick. The poems transfigure contemporary landscapes of the city and the countryside in an unsettling flux of fractured narrative time and atomised human agency. Here, a panorama of gleaming towers and blood-red cranes mirrors another of overgrown flora and shorelines collapsing into the sea.

At the book’s heart is the figure of the scarecrow – a monad, feet cemented, ragged legs flailing, unable – or unwilling – to act as the world rushes by.  At turns wistful, angry, and touched with remorse, this inventive and thought-provoking volume brings together registers of folk, baroque and the surreal to confront a 21st-century sense of existential crisis.

MW Bewick is a writer of poetry and fiction. He works, and is widely published, as a journalist. He lives in Wivenhoe, Essex.

Writing contemporaries have been enthusiastic in their praise for Scarecrow. Here are some choice snippets…

‘A seriously good poet – fierce, political, able to capture industrial and post industrial landscapes with precise and sometimes painful imagery, tender about the natural world – love it!’  Kate Foley, poet

‘If I ever write anything half as good as Scarecrow or have something that lovely looking published, I’ll be bloody happy’  David Southwell, author Hookland Guide

Our final book is the latest release from Dunlin Press, Lessons for an Apprentice Eel Catcher by Alex Toms.

In her debut collection of poetry, Alex Toms introduces us to a troupe of curious characters to explore themes of love, womanhood and sex. At the centre of this collection is the eel catcher, a shadowy figure who lives on the fringes of everyday experience. The eel catcher weaves willow traps, and tales of folklore and magic, evoking an East Anglia inhabited by poachers, witches and ghosts.

In her poems, Toms skilfully summons the uncanny, and out of it draws a slithering sense with which we are all familiar. Here are all the snares of life, and also perhaps, a spell that could set us free.

These wonderfully evocative poems are accompanied by specially commissioned individual paper-cut illustrations and bespoke photography.

As this book is so new, it’s currently out for reviews. However the Alex’s collection has already impressed fellow writers, with poet Martin Newell commenting, “These poems are not just clever, they have depth and originality. I hope it’s a big success”.

Alex Toms is a repeat winner in national poetry competitions and in 2015 was Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year. She is widely published in magazines, journals and anthologies.

You can buy the box set at our Dunlin Press shop.