Verve Poetry Press

You Missed The Best Part gathers award-winning poet Bradley Taylors spoken word pieces from the first years of his career. With a focus on the power of performance poetry, this collection acts as a documentation of the poems Bradley has travelled across the UK performing - in places such as the Hay Festival, on BBC News, in train stations, the backs of pubs and as part of his award-winning performance at the Roundhouse Poetry Slam 2024, the night of which was the biggest poetry slam in history.Also included here are a selection of poems written for strangers from Bradleys time performing ''Poetry on Demand'' - in which he takes his typewriter to festivals, events, bookshops and local parks across the country to gift strangers with a bespoke poem of their own choosing.Described as ''all at once surprising, entertaining and daring'' & ''playing a crucial role in the future of spoken word'' by Jasmine Gardosi, Bradleys work aims to showcase that poetry is for everyone and anyone - balancing humour with heart, Bradley writes for and about people; those he knows and has known, along with those people we hope to be or hope to never be again. You Missed The Best Part captures the moment that is always passing - this very moment - whether that be a moment in our lives, a moment on stage in front of an audience or a moment with a poem in front of us.

''In her stunning debut pamphlet, Ilisha Thiru Purcell reworks and revivifies the millennia old Tamil poetic practice of Thinnai – the poetics of a codified landscape – transplanting it to her home environment in the North East of England. Her perfectly crafted, almost elegiac poems root trauma and recovery deeply within a landscape which acts not just as witness, but also as a canvas. For me, reading What She Said felt like coming home: not to a home I once abandoned, but to the comforting presence of the old within the new. An exciting fresh voice which plays with form and metaphor with breath taking skill, this is diasporan poetics at its best.'' - Shash Trevett