For four centuries Anne Shakespeare, née Hathaway, has been in her famous husband's shadow. It's high time she had a book of her own.
This bold and ground-breaking volume places her centre-stage and encourages us to re-imagine Anne in her own right, and afresh for our own times. Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare brings together sixty-seven newly-commissioned poems, one for each year of Anne's life. Here, too, are ten poems of the past. The poetic voices that sing from this book are excitingly diverse in their age and background. Together they present a multi-faceted portrait of Anne's identity and dreams.
Brave, moving, liberating, and witty, Anne-thology brings together Anne's past and present and is a bold beacon, illuminating the enduring legacy of this remarkable woman for future generations.
Including poems from: John Agard, Vasiliki Albedo, Andre Bagoo, Robert Bal, Liam Bates, Sally Bayley, Charlie Baylis, Mathilde Blind, Jane Burn, Wendy Cope, Hannah Copley, Lesley Curwen, Rishi Dastidar, Olga Dermott-Bond, Imtiaz Dharker, Charles Dibdin, Carol Ann Duffy, Ella Duffy, Taylor Edmonds, Paul Edmondson, Barbara Everett, Ewan Fernie, Tommy Oliver Sam Flynn, Paul Francis, Wendy Freeman, Jo Gatford, Kathy Gee, Neal Hall, Susanna Shakespeare Hall, Judith Shakespeare Quiney, John Harris, Justina Hart, Lucy Holme, Maisie Ireland, William Ireland, Luke Kennard, Aaron Kent, Chris Laoutaris, Fiona Larkin, Nina Lewis, Len Lukowski, Anna Catherine Markham, Louise Mather, Andrea Mbarushimana, Fokkina McDonnell, Jennifer McLean, Andrew McMillan, Stuart McPherson, Jessica Mehta, Jenny Mitchell, Constance Naden, Grace Nichols, Richard O'Brien, Yewande Okuleye, Emilia Olivia, Caleb Parkin, Roger Pringle, Emma Purshouse, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, Sam Quill, Dean Rhetoric, Rochelle Roberts, Amber Rollinson, Rachel Sambrooks, George Sandifer-Smith, Hal Algernon Sandle-Keynes, Anna Saunders, Katherine Scheil, William Shakespeare, Genevieve Anne Marragold Stead, Julie Stevens, Taylor Strickland, Elizabeth Sylvia, Kostya Tsolakis, Carina Vallera-Satchwell, U. G. Világos, Cat Weatherill, Rowan Williams, and Ayşegül Yıldırım
Kent, Aaron: - Aaron Kent is a working-class writer and insomniac from Cornwall. His upcoming book, The Working Classic, is published with the87press in December 2023. Aaron was awarded the Awen medal in 2020, then subsequently suffered a brain haemorrhage a few months later. Coincidence? Probably.
Laoutaris, Chris: - Chris Laoutaris is Associate Professor at The Shakespeare Institute. His poetry collection, Bleed and See (Broken Sleep Books), was shortlisted for the Eric Gregory Poetry Awards. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Countess (Penguin; shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize) and Shakespeare's Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio (William Collins).
Scheil, Katherine: - Katherine Scheil is Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, and author of Imagining Shakespeare's Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway (Cambridge, 2008) as well as the entries for Anne and her daughter Judith in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
