“In Mid Lands, Jacqueline Gabbitas reveals an acute ear for the warmth of homeland dialect and an astute and telling eye for startling detail. I thoroughly recommend this impressive debut.” – Sarah Wardle

It would act something like a headstone then.
No need for an inscription when each year
fat buds would break into leaves

shining like your eyes did or like the light
on Whitby Harbour when your ashes
caught the sea, the day’s end in their arc.

from The Pomegranate Tree

Jacqueline Gabbitas’ short poetry collection, Mid Lands, is grounded in both the real, physical landscape of the North Nottinghamshire of her early life and the metaphorical mid lands of language. In her use of dialect and accent she embraces a richness often overlooked in English poetry. Her poems are sometimes dark in their content, sometimes lighter, but the lyrical voice is always simultaneously elegant and tough. She brings to life murderous cheese mongers, cave dwelling spiders and Chinese goddesses and gives voices to fields and disenfranchised coal miners. Framing these fantastical stories are the tender and honest poems to and about her family and late sister.

Jacqueline Gabbitas’ poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies and has won prizes in various competitions. In 2006 she was commended in the New Writing Ventures Awards. She is an editor for Brittle Star magazine and works for The Literary Consultancy, UEL and The Poetry School. She has an MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University.