Our poetry imprint at Not From This Planet has five titles from four authors, and there are more titles planned for 2025.

We have two books by Catriona Messenger, life dealer and hope dealer. (She as since published love dealer, under her own imprint) They are beautiful poems of love, hope, grief and sadness, and are illustrated by Catriona too. Catriona is a beautiful soul who used poetry to get through a tragic event which changed her life forever.

We have two books from Elizabeth Lockwood, and another on the way in January. Waves of Stardust is a breathtakingly sad yet beautiful book filled with illustrations and poems about Elizabeth’s pregnancy, birth and loss of her beautiful baby boy, Osian. After the loss, Elizabeth continued to write poetry to cope with the grief while she continued to care for and raise her three other children, and that became Rain and Leaves. In January 2025, her latest collection will be available, called Ghosts of the Water.

The fifth poetry title is Duelling Poets, by myself and a poet and retired journalist, Victor Keegan. For 30 days we both wrote a poem each day with the same title, and in the book, they aren’t credited, so you can vote for your favourite, then at the end of the book, see which poet is your winner!

I wrote a lot of poetry as a teenager, mostly to process emotions I didn’t know how to cope with, and to explore concepts and ideas of other worlds or dimensions. Sometimes the words would just arrive and I would jot them down, not really sure of their meaning. Poetry has got me through some tough times, and I know for Elizabeth and Catriona, it has done the same. On our NFTP Instagram, we post monthly poetry prompts, and because we love a haiku, we also do a haiku competition with them. So if you fancy having a go at penning a poem, do check out the prompts and join in!

Here’s one of my haikus that I wrote for one of the October prompts. Keep an eye on my stories for more throughout December.