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Emily Cotterill

@emilycotterill.bsky.social
476 followers 162 following 193 posts

Poet on unnecessary themes. Significant Wow out now with Seren Books.

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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
In the Bristol vicinity? Come along for poems!
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
All poetry editors know that 'Available Car' is a reference to not just a car that is available but also used car supermarket with 'hundreds of cars available to see, test drive, and buy at Available Car Castle Donnington and Available Car[dot]com ' right? Right???
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
For some reason I'm listening to football songs in the middle of the night and you really do have to respect how little effort went into rewriting the lyrics of Whole Again for the Southgate version. Go on girls. Give us absolutely nothing.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Some books recently
Photo of the books: Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford, 16( Songs of Hatred and Failure - A History of Manic Street Preachers, and What We Can Know by Ian McEwanPhotograph of the books The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wooden, and No Truce With the Furies by R.S. Thomas
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Resolving not to resolve to much because resolving leads to sadness and time is arbitrary? Here's a poem about how you can't fix your life with social media vibes: youtu.be/3R_FYKfn72Y?...
youtu.be
Emily Cotterill reads ‘GRWM for a Looming Personal Crisis’
YouTube video by serenbooks
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The Lonely Crowd @thelonelycrowd.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Some of our Books of the Year choices include Sarah Hall @faberbooks.bsky.social @emilycotterill.bsky.social @traceyrhys.bsky.social @anthonyshapland.bsky.social @lucyrosecreates.bsky.social @jay-griffiths.bsky.social & @clareshawpoet.bsky.social thelonelycrowd.org/2025/12/14/b...
thelonelycrowd.org
Books of the Year 2025 / Part Three
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. John Lavin   Twenty years in the making, Sarah Hall’s seventh novel, Helm, is an imaginative tour de force. …
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
Huge thanks to Taz for including Significant Wow in his books of the year. He describes the collection as 'an edgy, streetwise, alternative lens of self-hood' 💚🖤
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
One of those very normal poems I've written youtu.be/3R_FYKfn72Y?...
youtu.be
Emily Cotterill reads ‘GRWM for a Looming Personal Crisis’
YouTube video by serenbooks
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
The 'I really liked the way that he respected me' bit in the Sugababes song 'Push the Button' is surely the most unintentionally devastating moment in 21st century pop culture. Like what a tragic thing to have written down and then sung Jesus Christ.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Thank you Mamdani for allowing me to learn that it is *discomfited* and not *discomforted*. Truly the people's champion.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
In a devastatingly rude move Waterstones have put my pamphlet The Day of the Flying Ants on clearance! Does mean you can grab it for all of three quid should you feel the urge: www.waterstones.com/book/the-day...
waterstones.com
The Day of the Flying Ants by Emily Cotterill | Waterstones
Buy The Day of the Flying Ants by Emily Cotterill from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
I am so absolutely god awful at describing what Significant Wow is about. I might just get some pictures of this collage of brands printed out and hand it to people by way of explanation. emilycotterill.com/product/sign...
Logos of the following brands: Dartington Crystal, Wetherspoons, Calendar Club, Schwartz, golddigga, Brains, BHS, Smash Hits!, BT, Warburtons, McDonalds Happy Meal, Wikipedia, East Midlands Designer Outlet, Starbucks, LinkedIn, Uno, Dr Martens, Carling, Debenhams, Burger King, BAFTA, Nescafe, Primark, J20, Hilton Honors, Monster Munch
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Notes made to myself presumably in the pursuit of poetry: - thin legged dads - sick in your hands on the backseat - on the days we know there are jacket potatoes for tea ???
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
I hear that Joy Division t-shirts are in the news thanks to the Aussies I don't know how often Anthony Albanese is drunk & he's about as far away from me as it's possible to be. That said I'd be a fool not to post this poem from my collection Significant Wow www.serenbooks.com/book/signifi...
Screenshot of a poem which reads

She’s Lost Control

You are never far from a drunk man in a Joy Division t-shirt.
The old men gather around the cribbage board 
and from between them he emerges. He does not know
that The Atrocity Exhibition is a novel by Ballard 
or recognise the pattern of a pulsar. The same way you do not
know the meanings of flowers, or Latin, the names of famous
painters, or anything. You know this because you ask him
at every occasion. You are raw acne conscious of your
matching attire. You make veiled reference to Peter Hook,
giving yourself conspicuous permission. On occasion
you have wanted to fuck the drunk man in a Joy Division t-shirt
because you were young, stupid, vulnerable or he was hot.
You do not have the necessary compulsion for mistakes.
Having never existed when Joy Division existed, you are
uncomfortable in your presentation of culture. Nervous.
Wherever you go, you are testing the universe of knowledge
around you, gathering up physics and post-punk drumming
without the confidence required to push back what’s coming.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
I wonder what Ernest Hemingway would have to say about the number of unused baby shoes for sale on Vinted. Is this a poem or???
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MꙬse Allain @mooseallain.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Remember, if you are going out in the hail showers today, pop a child's xylophone on your head for added fun.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Won £25 on the Premium Bonds but am gutted to be reminded that the email you get no longer says 'Good News From ERNIE About Your Premium Bonds'. That's a poem out the window ffs.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
'They'll chisel fucking poet when they do you and that, yer cunt, 's a crude four-letter word.' 💔
Photo of the book V. by Tony Harrison
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Breaking up with Dan for saying 'the sort of shit you listen to, Britpop where the guy can't sing... PULP!'
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Perk of being a dual income no kids person over 30 and not in London, brands are desperate for your cash and have no single clue how to speak to you. It's hilarious. It's joy. It's fodder.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Enjoyed speaking to the Swansea & District Writers' Circle last night. It is impossible to look good in a mid chat photo especially when you've spent six hours in the car that day 🚗 📚
Photo of Emily signing booksPhoto of Emily sitting at a table in front of a Swansea & District Writers' Circle banner
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
Significant Wow spotted at The Bookshop By The Sea in Aberystwyth ❤️ 🌊 📚
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
Do I know anyone who knows an East Mids based poet who might be interested in reading with me at an Alfreton event?
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
Do I know anyone who knows an East Mids based poet who might be interested in reading with me at an Alfreton event?
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Who wrote the line Gilmore Girls where Paris says she is an Anglophile and then references Neil Kinnock? Have they been held accountable for their crimes??
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Went to the East Midlands to see old friends and came back with a current affairs poem.
Flag Summer

Was a summer like childhood, storybook weather
and brown grass, with  ground hard for handstands
and rounders slides. Uknown threat-hope of a new year
burgeoning at the edge of your six-week universe. 
Ready to turn fun tumble into real fight for something
snarled but not defined. So much without anything.
In the dark, or early, or other moments, things unsaid
are still things happening. There are holes in different
kinds of smiles. Anti-climb paint clinging to fingers
and inner trouser thighs and a wind ripple of something
poisonous, turning anger into fear, danger, and fabric.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Went to the East Midlands to see old friends and came back with a current affairs poem.
Flag Summer

Was a summer like childhood, storybook weather
and brown grass, with  ground hard for handstands
and rounders slides. Uknown threat-hope of a new year
burgeoning at the edge of your six-week universe. 
Ready to turn fun tumble into real fight for something
snarled but not defined. So much without anything.
In the dark, or early, or other moments, things unsaid
are still things happening. There are holes in different
kinds of smiles. Anti-climb paint clinging to fingers
and inner trouser thighs and a wind ripple of something
poisonous, turning anger into fear, danger, and fabric.
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Reposted by Emily Cotterill
Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
Looking forward to speaking to the Swansea and District Writers' Circle in September 🍂 swanseawriters.co.uk/september-20...
swanseawriters.co.uk
September 2025 Guest Speaker Emily Cotterill - Swansea & District Writers Circle
Emily Cotterill is a Cardiff-based poet from Alfreton, Derbyshire. Her debut pamphlet The Day of the Flying Ants was published by smith|doorstop in 2019. The pamphlet was a part of Carol Ann … Septemb...
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
Fully thought Corbyn was sporting a dangly earring in this photo and honestly I'm here for it.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
I maintain my anti-yarn-bombing stance but these lil guys, right by the rec that is the main inspiration for this poem, really did have me on the ropes for a moment.
A railing in front of dry grass featuring miniature knitted versions of the characters Feathers McGraw, Wallace, Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep from Wallace and Gromit.Photograph of a poem which reads:
The yarn-bombers don't know
I'm at war with them. I only rip off their rain soaked small world
kitsch in my imagination. I am as unobtrusive as they are. My edges
are softening. I fascinate myself with destruction and spray-paint
but the crotcheted mice of reality still ive their post-box topping lives,
tiny slices of unknowable cake, stuck on the way to undetailed mouths.
Who has the time for woollen graffiti? Who is the parish-councillor
god of village greens and bunting? In the phone-box library I turn
romance spines to face inward, bury novels under German readers
and manuals for toasters long taken by landfill. I know what the don't
that British Telecom is coming with binbads and police nocies
to take all this chaos apart. I drink three beers on the grass
of the Public Space Protection Order alcohol prohibitied space.
In my sun-stroked half dreams, the mouse people twich into reality,
swarm down to meet me, tiny faces twisted in a picture postcard of hate.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
Looking forward to speaking to the Swansea and District Writers' Circle in September 🍂 swanseawriters.co.uk/september-20...
swanseawriters.co.uk
September 2025 Guest Speaker Emily Cotterill - Swansea & District Writers Circle
Emily Cotterill is a Cardiff-based poet from Alfreton, Derbyshire. Her debut pamphlet The Day of the Flying Ants was published by smith|doorstop in 2019. The pamphlet was a part of Carol Ann … Septemb...
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
26 year advance praise for Significant Wow. Buy your copy now, it's what Mrs Walls would want. emilycotterill.com/product/sign...
Photograph of a children's 'Star Award's certificate which reads: presented to Emily Cotterill for always trying hard and doing some lovely stories and pieces of writing. 14th of July 1999, date. Mrs Walls, signed.'
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
Answered the phone right at the end of Helter Skelter, so when I hung up Ringo Starr screamed 'FINGERS' at me...
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
If John Boyne doesn't believe in the T then *he* should have withdrawn from the longlist for an LGB**T**Q+ prize and then none of this would have happened to him?
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
I haven't done this yet but I think it's becoming increasingly important that I do.
Photograph a Walkers Wotsits Mac n cheese ready meal packet
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
Google AI serving up a piss take of the French is a hell of a thing 🧄
Screenshot of an AI overview from a Google search featuring a photograph of a caricature of a French man with a moustache, a beret, and a string of onions around his neck.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Have just typed up a poem about nicking glasses from pubs. Really tempted to name it Kiss The Alderman after one of Bob Mortimer's iconic beers. It's this kind of channelling really-quite-old-now internet content that's going to help poetry re-enter the mainstream right?
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Discovered some early masterpieces 🎨
Children's drawing of a floating head saying 'Moses I want you to go back to Egypt' to a manChildren's drawing of a man saying 'ok God' to a floating head
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Tiernan Douieb @tiernandouieb.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Please say their lawyer is like a little hedgehog in a suit with a briefcase
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
Popping over to LinkedIn for my daily dose of analytically redundant arguments from the 'woe is me' side of the private school VAT debate.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
I'd neglected to do an update and so the shop on my website wasn't working. I know that's the only reason you hadn't bought 5 copies of Significant Wow directly from me and HOORAY because now it is fixed and you can do just that 🎊 On you go ⤵️ emilycotterill.com/product/sign...
Image of the book Significant Wow by Emily Cotterill
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
It's low on the list of reasons that Amazon are awful but the fact that *they" invented their *own" event called Prime *DAY* and it's now 4 days long or whatever drives me up the wall.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
Being in Cardiff the past few days one thing has become very clear to me: the real winner in this Oasis situation is whoever owns Adidas. Like DAMN.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
I know it's not the point but this new party chat has reminded me of the world's most pathetic Nandos and I thank them for that lol
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Thinking about the time in Year 1 that a boy called George claimed to have finished all his maths in about 10 minutes by copying all the sums from the board and insisting we didn't have to write in the answers.
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Tom Ewing @tomewing.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
The Daily Telegraph: here’s Britain’s answer to Rage Against The Machine 9 months later: We regret to inform you that Britain’s answer to Rage Against The Machine are political
Bob Vylan: here’s Britain’s answer to Rage Against The Machine
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MꙬse Allain @mooseallain.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
Gazpacho is one of the main revenge dishes.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
The way random Americans on talking head documentaries just completely randomly start chatting about Jesus always blows my mind. Absolutely chaotic.
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Emily Cotterill @emilycotterill.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Only 1500 John Major Toby Jugs were ever made. Make sure you hurry to the UK parliament shop
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