ISBN: 978-1-915108-39-5

Publication Date: 16 February 2026

122 pages

For Melville, as for Wordsworth before him, the child is father to the man, but he knows too that in the twenty-first century clouds are no longer lonely – they come in packs, designed just for you. Melville’s poems let you see, as if for the first time, what’s inside these packs once you open them: child-killing tanks, over-priced degrees in Butchery where the Sirloin Display Cabinet remains permanently out of reach, killer robins in the snow, class war, and the small hands of Donald Trump signing Executive Order 14208 to end the use of paper straws and bring back plastic. The experience, paradoxically, is strangely uplifting – “You need the dark / to show the light” – and it restores to us the simplicity of what matters: “kissing / your beautiful mouth / with full red lips / O / gloss!” —Philip Terry  

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Poem after Muriel Rukeyser’s ‘Poem’

I live in the second century of world wars. Most days I am pretty much mad, in the sense of angry and nuts, with a range of avoid dance and distraction strategies to hand. Careless is too kind for the kind of stories the media sp[r]out these days news spreading out of various devices interrupted by auto-playing Temu ads whose music makes me shout get tae fuck as I scroll down doom.

I text, mostly dodging  phone calls from, my friends who are more or less insane, for same, though some never mention such. Slowly I put words on a Word document, make my poems for others illseen and unknown. Rukeyser would use the conditional mood to talk about the past and talk about the future in the past but I use the present for the present is tense —future too. This is my poem talking about the present in the past  and the past in the present of the future.

I mark with points or dots        punctuating out with my comfort zone        inserting pauses  to prick and pierce.     I live(d) and love(d)  in the second century of these wars but also the first  for some time  and will definitely die in the second.

Whether or not it is a result of the war(s) I live and love through    remains  to be seen.

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Melville warps and weaves sound textures; he world-builds our fucked post-human, post-post dystopian paradigm in its own fucked image, an oozing, grotesque, glitching narrative, “just as real as reality”. Melville’s voice feels audible, almost comforting, as we contemplate the odd sensation of feeling “happy” for just one moment and it feeling so very alien, but rather than imploding in a black hole of dismay and despair, this voice excites and reminds us of the power of righteous rage. Nicky Melville keeps us going...keeps us going tae fuck! —Sascha Aurora Akhtar

Nicky Melville is my favourite kind of poet, leading me to question everything I thought I understood about our world, “chose / comfort over / freedom.” It is imperative that he tells you what is eating away at the ground beneath you. Thank you again, poet! —CAConrad