Now available to pre-order

Winner of the 2023/24 Live Canon Pamphlet Competition  

'Never before has the reading of a book of poetry felt to me quite so viscerally like being taken on a series of absorbing walks (even by those poems which aren't about the great outdoors). Alice has landscaped this meticulously chosen selection with poems which truly stand out – a panorama of pieces as places within and without, each rewarding with a vista for which I was glad to have made the journey.' (Mark Antony Owen)

‘Headlands’ is one of those rare treats: a pamphlet where the poet sees with clarity what needs to be seen. Moreover, in poems of language and landscape – both of nature and the personal – Stainer allows herself to be seen in reply. By excavating the ‘agony of in-between’ and laying herself bare ‘at the sharp edges of things’, she asks, ‘How can we pierce the fastness of what we yearn to know?’ and ‘… what are we / made of, after all, but moments of exposure?’ Her replies – crafted with care in poems that flow freely and in poems of form – take us to the headlands and beyond. This book is a real pleasure to spend time with.' (Claire Dyer)