Osmosis Press

9:02 ‹ Notes Along the way, Osmosis has been supported by a generous and creative team of editorial advisors, and our former communications coordinator, Scott Lilley, who kept our readers up to date with our latest digital publications, book launches, and events. You may have noticed that Saskia is now on a new and incredible adventure. Cat has since turned their focus toward our printed books, and worked closely with Briony to launch our two latest publications! Again, community made the impossible possible! 囗

9:02 ‹ Notes As Osmosis is run in an entirely voluntary capacity, the risk of burning out is big. What we do is very much a labor of love, and when times have been tough we have reminded ourselves how necessary it is to keep small press publishing alive and thriving. It is an honor to contribute to creative culture in the UK and beyond. Like many other independent publishers, we have been at a crossroads - but we are determined to continue our work in uplifting, celebrating, and publishing groundbreaking writing. We are so proud that Osmosis continues to be a community project - watch this space

THE NEWS CONTINUES

9:01 ‹ Notes January 29, 2026 at 9:01 AM We are excited to announce that the Osmosis team is growing! Meet Alice, Francis, and Winter, who will be collaborating with Briony and Cat on the next chapter in the Osmosis adventure. Excited is probably an understatement - this trio is a force to be reckoned with! As most of our readers know, independent publishing is very much a community endeavor. After launching Osmosis in 2021, Briony was quickly joined on her adventure by the incredible Saskia, and together they grew Osmosis from a small idea (and lots of energy, love, and determination) into a full bookshelf of innovative books! Since stepping into the role of digital editor in 2023, Cat has published a dynamic range of poetry, essays, short stories, film, text art, and hybrid experimentations across our featured writing blog - their energetic contribution to the project has been remarkable.

ALICE IS A WRITER, POET AND ARTIST FROM LONDON. HER CREATIVE WORK SPANS ARCHIVAL PRACTICES, COLLAGE, PRINT MAKING, ZINES AND TEXTILES. THESE WORKS HAVE BEEN COLLECTED BY THE NATIONAL POETRY LIBRARY, ARTS UNIVERSITY BOURNEMOUTH, THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY AND MULTIPLE PRIVATE COLLECTIONS. SHE IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON ALTERNATIVE MEMOIR AND EXPLORATIONS OF ANTICIPATORY GRIEF, EXISTENTIALISM AND SALVAGE.

WINTER IS A POET, PERFORMER AND MODEL. SHE JUST STARTED HER PRACTICE-BASED PHD IN CREATIVE WRITING AT ROYAL HOLLOWAY, WITH HER RESEARCH INTERESTS INCLUDING TRANSPOETICS, PERFORMANCE POETICS, ARCHIVES AND EPHEMERA. WINTER CHEN

FRANGIS DE LIMA FRANCIS IS A FINNISH-BRAZILIAN POET LIVING IN LONDON, WHERE THEY RECENTLY COMPLETED THEIR MA IN POETIC PRACTICE AT ROYAL HOLLOWAY. MANY OF THEIR POEMS CAN BE FOUND IN ONLINE LITERATURE MAGAZINES, AND SOME HAVE EVEN BEEN SHORTLISTED FOR AN AWARD OR TWO. THEY ALSO WORK AS A TRANSLATOR, AS WELL AS IN VARIOUS ROLES WITHIN INDEPENDENT THEATRE, FILM, AND ART PROJECTS, BOTH IN THE UK AND ABROAD.

ANNOUNCING SOME GOOD NEWS

SPOTTED: copies of Him Hymn in the wild at @burleyfisher.bsky.social

YouTube video by Poetics Research Centre The Living Library: a pop-up exhibition of eco poetry

Did you miss The Living Library? We’ve got you covered! I’m excited to share the video and audio documentation of our @beinghumanfest.bsky.social pop-up exhibition at the Landmark Arts Centre, curated by @royalholloway.bsky.social researchers 🍃🦇⛅️🐝 www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3PH...

Thank you!!!

i love the title 😍

Thanks to our wonderful readers - Francis de Lima, maddy Pope, Caiti Luckhurst, and David Spittle, alongside everybody who joined us in the audience!

What an incredible evening celebrating the launch of Grief is the Thing in Pleather by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain at the iconic Housmans 🖤

Grief is the Thing in Pleather: Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain Released 26th November 2025Edition of 100 copies.ISBN: 978-1-0369-3369-2 “Grief is the thing in pleather: iterative, reshuffling noir signifiers, re-marking punctuation, always to the same en…

This is not a drill! ‘Grief is the Thing in Pleather’ by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain is RELEASED today! A limited edition of 100 copies 🪰🪰🪰 osmosispress.com/grief-is-the...

Him Hymn: Tamsyn Challenger Released 25th November 2025Edition of 200 copies.ISBN: 978-1-0369-6283-8 “Any map of heartbreak can only be a version or representation of the territory, but this almost impossible task is also the…

Order via the Osmosis website: osmosispress.com/him-hymn-tam...

We are overjoyed to welcome Tamsyn Challenger’s tender, unflinching, and urgent Him Hymn into the world today! This publication is Challenger’s debut book of poetry, written with an incredible commitment to an intimate and luminous lyric I💙

We have a handful of additional review copies for Him Hymn and Grief is the Thing in Pleather! Drop our editor @brihughespoet.bsky.social a message if you’re interested in reviewing!💙🖤

Housmans Poetry Series: Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain launches ‘Grief is a Thing in Pleather’ Join us for another poetry evening, this time in collaboration with our great friends Osmosis Press, launching a new collection, ‘Grief is a Thing in Pleather’, from Prudence Bussey-Chamberlai…

Described by @suchmayer.bsky.social as containing ‘life after life after life […] with all the sardonic seriousness, [and] the deadpan profound, that characterises Bussey-Chamberlain’s work’ - this launch is not to be missed!

housmans.com/event/housma...

series ‘Dickinson’, Waldrop’s palimptext method, Denise Riley’s ‘Time Lived Without Its Flow’, Randy Schilt’s ‘And The Band Played On’, and ‘The Dead Poet’s Society’, to challenge conventional renderings of death, grief, citation, the banality of bodies and their upkeep. (3/4)

means to live with grief, where Death becomes an embodied figure who runs both literally and figuratively through the text. Borrowing from Emily Dickinson’s figure of death in ‘because I could not stop for death’, this collection mixes Wiz Khalifa from Alena Smith’s Apple TV (2/4)

Housmans Poetry Series Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain launches Grief is a Thing in Pleather published by Osmosis Press + a host of special guest readers Hosted by Briony Hughes and Cat Chong 1900, 26/11/2025 Book your free tickets here: Housmans.com/events Housmans 5 Caledonian Road Kings Cross London N1 9DX

"Grief is the thing in pleather: iterative, reshuffling noir signifiers, re-marking punctuation, always to the same end. As Bussey-Chamberlain writes: 'Last time was not the last time; / I am here again.' From open field composition glittering in headlit streaks to the short gasps of Emily Dickinson's lines, in the narrow time of birthing and the contained prose poems of time lived, this brief collection packs in life after life after life, an expansive exploration of Dickinson's choice of "kindly" for Death's stop, with all the sardonic seriousness, the deadpan profound, that characterises Bussey-Chamberlain's work." So Mayer

A copy of the black and white cover of Grief is a Thing in Pleather published by Osmosis Press.

Two copies of the cover held up together in one hand.

✨LAUNCH EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT✨

We are delighted to be launching Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain’s ‘Grief is a Thing in Pleather’ at @housmansbookshop.bsky.social as part of the Housman’s Poetry Series on the 26th of November at 7pm!

This collection is a consideration of/ writing through what it (1/4)

“This brief collection packs in life after life after life, an expansive exploration of Dickinson’s choice of “kindly” for Death’s stop, with all the sardonic seriousness, the deadpan profound, that characterises Bussey-Chamberlain’s work.” (So Mayer) osmosispress.com/grief-is-the...

Him Hymn: Tamsyn Challenger Forthcoming 25th November 2025: Preorder BelowEdition of 200 copies.ISBN: 978-1-0369-6283-8 “Any map of heartbreak can only be a version or representation of the territory, but this almost impossib…

“These poems are confronting, gorgeous and wild. When you read them, you’ll hear songs. Tamsyn Challenger knows exactly to which rhythm a broken heart beats.” (Nadia de Vries) osmosispress.com/him-hymn-tam...

It has been an absolute joy to work on these books - and we are so excited for you to hold them in your hands. Head over to the Osmosis website to read excerpts from each publication and preorder your own copy! Preorders will be posted on Saturday

Love, Briony and Cat 🖤

PREORDER ALERT 🚨🚨🚨

IT FEELS SO GOOD TO BE BACK! This month, Tamsyn Challenger’s ‘Him Hymn’ and Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain’s ‘Grief is the Thing in Pleather’ will be released on 25th and 26th respectively🖤

Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain: extract from ‘Grief is a Thing in Pleather’ Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing atRoyal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of two books of poetry,Retroviral* (Veer, …

osmosispress.com/2025/09/07/p...

as an inevitable eventuality, as ‘You will crash, or / You will run out of gas’, Bussey-Chamberlain perceives the drop dead pride in the ‘buzz of flies’ who linger at both endings of the crash and empty fuel tank. (4/4)

Blurb by @marbledmayhem

is not handsome, a buzz of flies’. Echoing Dickinson’s ‘I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591)’, this poem rewrites the fly as the omen of Death’s ego. As Caroline Hogue wrote in 2015, the blowfly ‘pollutes everything it touches. Its eggs are maggots. It is as carrion as a buzzard’. Framed (3/4)

from Alena Smith’s Apple series Dickinson, Bussey-Chamberlain’s collection reimagines Death’s identity in the age of the incel. Interpellated into the poem, ‘When your engine finally gives out Death pulls up, kicks his / door wide open, says Ride or Die. You choose both. Close up / his face (2/4)

* When your engine finally gives out Death pulls up, kicks his door wide open, says Ride or Die. You choose both. Close up his face is not handsome, a buzz of flies. There’s a waterproof hat in the back, wide rimmed and when a fly stops at your ear you ask it, why do you stay? To be as regal as the buzzard one day it replies as if the bounty hunter can confer carrion pride to everything he touches * You will crash, or You will run out of gas Both are an ending. *

This week Osmosis is so excited to be featuring an extract from the forthcoming collection 'Grief is a Thing in Pleather' by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain! Writing back to Emily Dickinson’s figure of death in ‘because I could not stop for death’ alongside Wiz Khalifa’s character (1/4)

Her critical work includes two monographs, The Feminist Fourth Wave: Affective Temporality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Queer Troublemakers: Poetics of Flippancy (Bloomsbury, 2019). Her debut novel Bone Horn was published in June 2025 with Cipher Press. (5/5)

Lecturer in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of two books of poetry, Retroviral* (Veer, 2018) and {Coteries} (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2017), and the co-author of House of Mouse with SJ Fowler (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2017). (4/5)

palimptext method, Denise Riley’s Time Lived Without Its Flow, Randy Schilt’s And The Band Played On, and The Dead Poet’s Society, to challenge conventional renderings of death, grief, citation, alongside the banality of bodies and their upkeep. 

Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain is a Senior (3/5)

with grief, where Death becomes an embodied figure who runs both literally and figuratively through the text. Borrowing from Emily Dickinson’s figure of death in ‘because I could not stop for death’, this collection mixes Wiz Khalifa from Alena Smith’s Apple TV series Dickinson, Waldrop’s (2/5)

Grief is a Thing with Pleather by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain in white writing on a black background surrounded by white drawings of flies.

This week, interrupting our typical weekly Featured Writing schedule as we’re incredibly announce Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain’s latest collection will be forthcoming from Osmosis Press this October 2025!

This collection is a consideration of and a writing through what it means to live (1/5)