The Beauty Within Shadow (Flapjack Press, September 2020) was written just before and during lockdown. The poems are concerned with the balancing of darkness and light in our everyday lives. As with a lot of Henry Normal’s work, as well as humorous poetry, there’s a search for some understanding of pain and loss, and the processing of other thoughts we’d usually try to avoid by filling our days with mindless distractions. The painting on the cover is by his son, Johnny Carroll Pell.

Born in St Ann’s, Henry is a writer, poet and BAFTA-honoured TV and film producer. Founder of the Manchester Literature Festival and co-founder of the Nottingham Poetry Festival, he received a honorary doctorate from NTU, another from Nottingham University, and has a beer and a bus named after him. The Escape Plan (Flapjack Press, 2020) contains selected works from all of Henry’s previous books, and all the poems from Henry’s six BBC Radio 4 shows.

Find out more about Henry at his website.

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