Anne Caldwell

Anne Caldwell is a freelance writer, lecturer and editor. She currently works for the Open University and as an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund. Her latest collection of prose poetry, "Alice and the North", was published by Valley Press in 2020. Her three previous collections are "Slug Language" (Happenstance, 2008), "Talking with the Dead" (Cinnamon Press, 2011), and "Painting the Spiral Staircase" (Cinnamon Press, 2016). In 2022, she edited a book of essays on prose poetry (with Oz Hardwick) entitled "Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice" (Routledge, 2022). She also edited the "Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry" (Valley Press) with Oz Hardwick. Poems appear in Spelt Magazine, Poetry Wales, Ink Sweat and Tears, And Other Poems, The Rialto, Axon (Australia), and in international anthologies. This chapbook won the James Tate Poetry Prize 2023.

"Most men prefer a self-deprecating woman." Generations of disapproval leave their mark and install mindsets that are hard to break. Project Boast offers 65 poems by 28 women poets who are speaking out about the straitjacket they've had to wear and celebrating the possibility of change. The result is a joyous encouragement and heartfelt rejoinder.