Rebecca McCutcheon

event flyer for Out-Spoken Press 10th anniversary event on Tuesday 16 September 2025, 7-10pm, doors 6pm. Star of Kings N1 0AX. Free/register: OSPanniversary.eventbrite.co.uk Large Out-Spoken Press logo in white overlaid on a colourful riot of flowers on an electric blue background takes up the top half, reader lineup below: Joelle Taylor • Arji Manuelpillai • Adam Kammerling • lisa luxx • Alice Frecknall • Katie O'Pray • Maria-Sophia Christodoulou • Will Gee • Emma Jeremy • Alex Marlow • Azad Ashim Sharma • Rebecca McCutcheon • Rojbîn Arjen Yiğit • Maya Caspari • Joladé Olusanya • Madeleine Kruhly • Nikesh Shukla • Simon Maddrell

💐!!10th ANNIVERSARY!!💐

Sept 2025 marks a decade of publishing for Out-Spoken Press, founded by @aanaxagorou.bsky.social in 2015. Come and celebrate with us and a host of Out-Spoken poets at a special event:

Tuesday 16 September, 7–10pm
Star of Kings, London N1 0AX
OSPanniversary.eventbrite.co.uk

25.07.2025 08:55 — 👍 9    🔁 6    💬 0    📌 0

11.05.2025 11:14 — 👍 2    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0

Spent too much at Free Verse - happy anyway!

27.04.2025 08:43 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Any recommendations for poets that enjoy working with primary school children?

09.01.2025 09:47 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

‘Down’ by Rebecca McCutcheon. The cover is beige and cream with black and white paint strokes resembling feathers. The book is placed on a wicker table, and decorated with a single downy feather.

Poem text reads: LEAVE OF ABSENCE If anyone knew what I was listening to, they'd be ashamed. I’d say, it's not the song, it's this exact moment, but it wouldn't make it forgivable. The day is consuming in unhealthy doses. A man takes a drink and I realise it's been a week already. Rebecca can't come to work today, her life is too boring. A van has fallen into this side of the motorway and no-one calls you back when they say they will. The roads are full of death and the inevitable potential for it. There's a cat smashed into a curl, then all anyone talks about all day is cats. When there are humans around to miss things, tragedy is acceptable. Rebecca can't come to work today she's researching cat funeral songs. I pass this nature reserve every day, an overgrown scrub no one has money to maintain, which proves it's how you name things not what they are. A man takes a drink and his car growls to increase the pressure. Rebecca can't come to work today there's too much of the earth to tend to. Six squirrels fell in an uncovered water trough. The boy who found them loved violence until he made it real. He's only eight. I cut out shapes of grief, all hexagons. A man takes a drink in a bar and half the girls in there are sabotaged. Rebecca can't come to work today. She's covered in imaginary spiders. I'll never sustain what I give myself: cocktails, this step count, stability. I throw away warm water; I didn't pay for it, so no sunk costs. Rebecca can't come to work today. Diazepam is not a party drug. I call a boy who only identifies with half of himself in public. No answer. A man takes a drink and I figure things are bad enough. I've had them in the wrong order, like matryoshka dolls that don't fit inside each other. My heart is a nature reserve. It's a shame that the face of someone who knows what they're doing has to be this one. Rebecca McCutcheon

This collection has been on my to-read list for a while, so I snapped it up in the recent @outspokenpress.bsky.social sale and did not regret it! Brilliant poetry @chickenbex.bsky.social ❤️🪶
#poetry #poetsonbluesky

22.12.2024 15:35 — 👍 6    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Ah, thank you Corinna! I hope you enjoy the book! 💛

15.12.2024 18:51 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Relaxing birthday weekend achieved!

15.12.2024 18:42 — 👍 5    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

One of my favourite collections of 2024. I highly recommend reading this.

13.12.2024 17:20 — 👍 7    🔁 2    💬 2    📌 0

Aw that is so kind of you to say! 💚

13.12.2024 17:40 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Out-Spoken Press flash sale flyer; save up to 50% 9-14 December outspokenldn.com/press Flyer on graph paper grid background, green graded series of wooden nutcracker faces along the bottom edge

🌲Our winter FLASH SALE is now on 🌲

Save up to 50% on Out-Spoken Press titles on our shop this week (ends 14 December)

www.outspokenldn.com/press

09.12.2024 10:38 — 👍 3    🔁 5    💬 0    📌 1

Thank you!

23.11.2024 13:27 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Having a Lemsip and Covid kind of weekend.

23.11.2024 11:45 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

When poets say the moon is a cliche and when Sylvia Plath said the moon is:
“White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime”

19.11.2024 23:07 — 👍 47    🔁 16    💬 1    📌 1

That sinking feeling when you edit an early phrase out of a poem and now you need to reconfigure every line break!

19.11.2024 08:17 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

As an introduction, I’m a poet from Essex. I love poetry, particularly the kind that is strange and makes you think or feel. Here’s an example from my debut collection ‘Down’.
www.outspokenldn.com/shop/down

16.11.2024 16:58 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I’m not sure I ever really worked out the ‘other place’ so here’s to more new learning!

16.11.2024 11:06 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0