ISBN: 978-1-915108-36-4
Published on 16 October 2025
Drone
I’ve just bought a new toy, he tells me,
a multicopter, the camera attached by
a gimbal stabiliser, which tilts mid-flight,
making it super easy to get the classic
bird’s eye view of the town at golden hour,
and another documenting coastal erosion.
Of course, he goes on, there’s so much more –
the 36 page e-book explains how to adjust it
to a higher frame to record in slow motion,
and, depending on the setting, it’ll hover,
fly backwards or orbit around a central
location, like the beginning of Shawshank
when you look down on the grey prison
and see inmates streaming across the yard,
or the scenes of Manhattan in Spiderman.
I’m not saying I could do that, he admits,
but it’s important to have goals and a plan.
The main thing is to write a list of shots
before filming, because if you’re not careful,
you’ll waste the battery on long and tedious
footage that gets in the way of the story.
*
In her first full-length poetry collection, Date Show, Jane Bonnyman takes a delicious dive into ‘This Dating Malarkey’, as one poem title puts it. Each poem builds a cast of characters from Just a Dude to Storm-Lover to Joe Cool to name a few, and even Gatsby shows up. The search for the fairytale romance is arduous, heart-breaking, and hilarious as a candle-lit dinner, where the author writes, “I lean towards you and set fire to my hair.” The writing is artful, the lines brimming with surprising sounds and sense. The real transforms into the surreal during these “years of fails and fiascos” with those who would rather “go bungee-jumping into the abyss” or take “an eternal hike up the Lonely Mountain.” Date Show is a cinematic experience. I loved reading this book. —Susan Browne, author of Monster Mash (Four Way Books, New York)
Jane Bonnyman’s Date Show offers us a litany of dating disasters. There is the chance meeting with an ex while stuck in an airport queue, and the Zoom date with lighting problems. Against all the daftness the world gives us when we hold out our hearts, the poems offer a complete mastery of tone, a beautifully raised eyebrow, and a sense of the huge tenderness real love can bring, if we can just get through the nightmare. The collection is a compelling argument for the continued importance of poetry in an age of swiping right, and it’s ages since I’ve read a group of poems which were so thoroughly enjoyable. The book confirms Jane Bonnyman as one of the most exciting new voices in British poetry. Read it! —Jonathan Edwards, author of My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren)
Date Show by Jane Bonnyman
Writer
After he told me
that once in a pavement café
in the Place de la Bastille
when, in conversation with friends,
he threw his head back to laugh,
and a pigeon shat in his mouth,
I could not kiss him.He wrote poetry with French words,
said my eyes glinted like malachite.It didn’t work.
I just thought he was full of it.*
In Your Favourite Café
I snuck in here
when I wasn’t looking,
found myself sitting
by the window, staring
at the smudged glass,
the letters spelling
COFFEE back to front.I see you in an empty chair,
picking at the icing
on your Empire biscuit.
Milky foam clings
to the sides of your cup.
You’re wearing your old scarf
and the jumper I bought for you.It’s when I almost hear
the familiar rhythms of your voice,
I realise I’m waiting on the past
to tell me the thing I never quite got,
but I pick up my bag,
and am through the door,
before you know I was there.
Jane Bonnyman is a poet and teacher from Edinburgh. Her work has been widely published in journals including Mslexia, The Frogmore Papers and The Rialto. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, and has published two pamphlets An Ember from the Fire (Poetry Salzburg, 2016) and Dinner with Superman (Red Squirrel Press, 2020). Date Show is her first full collection.