Emily Cotterill
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emilycotterill.bsky.social
Emily Cotterill
@emilycotterill.bsky.social
460 followers 160 following 180 posts
Poet on unnecessary themes.

Significant Wow out now with Seren Books.
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emilycotterill.bsky.social
I hear that Joy Division t-shirts are in the news thanks to the Aussies

I don't know how often Anthony Albanese is drunk & he's about as far away from me as it's possible to be. That said I'd be a fool not to post this poem from my collection Significant Wow www.serenbooks.com/book/signifi...
Screenshot of a poem which reads She’s Lost Control You are never far from a drunk man in a Joy Division t-shirt. The old men gather around the cribbage board and from between them he emerges. He does not know that The Atrocity Exhibition is a novel by Ballard or recognise the pattern of a pulsar. The same way you do not know the meanings of flowers, or Latin, the names of famous painters, or anything. You know this because you ask him at every occasion. You are raw acne conscious of your matching attire. You make veiled reference to Peter Hook, giving yourself conspicuous permission. On occasion you have wanted to fuck the drunk man in a Joy Division t-shirt because you were young, stupid, vulnerable or he was hot. You do not have the necessary compulsion for mistakes. Having never existed when Joy Division existed, you are uncomfortable in your presentation of culture. Nervous. Wherever you go, you are testing the universe of knowledge around you, gathering up physics and post-punk drumming without the confidence required to push back what’s coming.
November 2, 2025 at 12:56 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
🐺 I am an absolute sucker for rewilding. Bring back the wolf. Bring back the lynx.
Photograph of the book The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall
October 19, 2025 at 9:17 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
'They'll chisel fucking poet when they do you
and that, yer cunt, 's a crude four-letter word.'
💔
Photo of the book V. by Tony Harrison
September 27, 2025 at 12:07 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
♟️ Several things:

- The bloke who wrote this also wrote The Man Who Fell to Earth? Mad.
- The sexy French woman was a TV only addition ffs
- BENNY WATTS
Photograph of the book The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
September 12, 2025 at 9:28 AM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Enjoyed speaking to the Swansea & District Writers' Circle last night. It is impossible to look good in a mid chat photo especially when you've spent six hours in the car that day 🚗 📚
Photo of Emily signing books Photo of Emily sitting at a table in front of a Swansea & District Writers' Circle banner
September 11, 2025 at 6:11 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Significant Wow spotted at The Bookshop By The Sea in Aberystwyth ❤️ 🌊 📚
September 7, 2025 at 4:48 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Towards the end of this book there is a series of chapters called: Escapes and Captures , Dungeons, and Torture. So that's jazzy.
Photo of the book Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb next to a cup of tea in a Creme Egg mug
September 1, 2025 at 9:27 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Went to the East Midlands to see old friends and came back with a current affairs poem.
Flag Summer Was a summer like childhood, storybook weather and brown grass, with ground hard for handstands and rounders slides. Uknown threat-hope of a new year burgeoning at the edge of your six-week universe. Ready to turn fun tumble into real fight for something snarled but not defined. So much without anything. In the dark, or early, or other moments, things unsaid are still things happening. There are holes in different kinds of smiles. Anti-climb paint clinging to fingers and inner trouser thighs and a wind ripple of something poisonous, turning anger into fear, danger, and fabric.
September 1, 2025 at 9:47 AM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Been slowly making my way through The Poetry Annual since Xmas. The last poem, Eric Yip's Ardently Love is one of the best things I've read in ages.
Photograph of The Forward Book of Poetry 2025
August 23, 2025 at 2:34 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
I maintain my anti-yarn-bombing stance but these lil guys, right by the rec that is the main inspiration for this poem, really did have me on the ropes for a moment.
A railing in front of dry grass featuring miniature knitted versions of the characters Feathers McGraw, Wallace, Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep from Wallace and Gromit. Photograph of a poem which reads: The yarn-bombers don't know I'm at war with them. I only rip off their rain soaked small world kitsch in my imagination. I am as unobtrusive as they are. My edges are softening. I fascinate myself with destruction and spray-paint but the crotcheted mice of reality still ive their post-box topping lives, tiny slices of unknowable cake, stuck on the way to undetailed mouths. Who has the time for woollen graffiti? Who is the parish-councillor god of village greens and bunting? In the phone-box library I turn romance spines to face inward, bury novels under German readers and manuals for toasters long taken by landfill. I know what the don't that British Telecom is coming with binbads and police nocies to take all this chaos apart. I drink three beers on the grass of the Public Space Protection Order alcohol prohibitied space. In my sun-stroked half dreams, the mouse people twich into reality, swarm down to meet me, tiny faces twisted in a picture postcard of hate.
August 23, 2025 at 1:41 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
26 year advance praise for Significant Wow. Buy your copy now, it's what Mrs Walls would want.

emilycotterill.com/product/sign...
Photograph of a children's 'Star Award's certificate which reads: presented to Emily Cotterill for always trying hard and doing some lovely stories and pieces of writing. 14th of July 1999, date. Mrs Walls, signed.'
August 20, 2025 at 6:36 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
I haven't done this yet but I think it's becoming increasingly important that I do.
Photograph a Walkers Wotsits Mac n cheese ready meal packet
July 27, 2025 at 5:07 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Google AI serving up a piss take of the French is a hell of a thing 🧄
Screenshot of an AI overview from a Google search featuring a photograph of a caricature of a French man with a moustache, a beret, and a string of onions around his neck.
July 27, 2025 at 4:22 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
🍊
Photograph of the book Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
July 26, 2025 at 11:08 AM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Discovered some early masterpieces 🎨
Children's drawing of a floating head saying 'Moses I want you to go back to Egypt' to a man Children's drawing of a man saying 'ok God' to a floating head
July 19, 2025 at 12:20 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
I'd neglected to do an update and so the shop on my website wasn't working. I know that's the only reason you hadn't bought 5 copies of Significant Wow directly from me and HOORAY because now it is fixed and you can do just that 🎊

On you go ⤵️

emilycotterill.com/product/sign...
Image of the book Significant Wow by Emily Cotterill
July 14, 2025 at 12:53 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
There are several differences between this book and Middlemarch by George Elliot: this one didn't take me six months to read; only one of them includes a harebrained scheme to get rich by trading in a horse.
Photograph of the book The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer
July 14, 2025 at 11:18 AM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Yes, yes this novel is a remarkable achievement but Jesus Christ I've been reading it for my whole life
Photograph of the book Middle march by George Eliot
July 9, 2025 at 4:57 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
There's a poem in this book that I don't think I'm clever enough to understand BUT it does contain the line 'But riverbanks know no sausages' and honestly I love that
Photograph of the book 'Bear' by Chrissy Williams
July 5, 2025 at 10:07 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
I know it's not the point but this new party chat has reminded me of the world's most pathetic Nandos and I thank them for that lol
July 4, 2025 at 7:13 AM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Only 1500 John Major Toby Jugs were ever made. Make sure you hurry to the UK parliament shop
June 27, 2025 at 7:34 AM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Really into the fact that this push news notification has arrived from the Financial Times. Absolutely correct and on brand behaviour.
Screenshot of a Google news notification from the financial times. The headline reads 'a British legend's deathbed letter sheds new light on the birth of punk' and the image is a photograph of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood that has been cut in half to separate them.
June 14, 2025 at 11:52 AM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
A fun night reading at Abergavenny's Poetry Upstairs which is in fact no longer up any stairs at all.

Did mess up the intonation of this poem though and made it sound like I used to masturbate to the idea of the death of David Bowie.
Photograph of a poem called 'Before David Bowie Died' it reads I would think about it coming sometimes - that macabre statistical promise in my small imagining of the universe
June 10, 2025 at 8:13 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
My dad has brought me a old of boxes from his loft. Treasures within include my first ever rejection slip courtesy of @poetrybusiness.bsky.social

No hard feelings though, they published my debut pamphlet in 2019 📚 🐜 emilycotterill.com/product/the-...
Photograph of a slip of paper from 'the North' with a printed message saying 'thank you for letting us see your work. We're sorry not to offer publication' and a handwritten message 'we liked a lot about your poems. Peter Sansom'
June 7, 2025 at 3:55 PM
emilycotterill.bsky.social
Second time lucky for the alt text
Photograph of a page of a book containing a poem called, "For the Drag Queen Who Lives in My Building" The poem reads: It’s obvious that I have noticed you – all the extremes of your body, in the smoking shelter you make from our shared doorway, but I don't talk to anyone. Shame fills my mouth like the padding around a pulled tooth. When I see you, I smile. Then smile again. I am still the same stranger to you, but I know dressing-gown or full drag, that you are a total body of commitment. I see the coffee jar you leave for your fag ends, hiding my face on the way to communal bins. When I imagine being enough of something, I imagine you. Proud. Hailing yourself a taxi. Knowing the meaning of the word.
June 7, 2025 at 9:59 AM