Amy Key

When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love.

Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - an album that shaped Key's expectations of love - as her guide, she examines the unexpected life she has created for herself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.

With profound candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss: loneliness, envy, grief and failure. The result is a singular work - a beautifully-written and essential book about building a life on your own terms, which inspires us to live and love more honestly.

Notes on Loving and Living Alone

Arrangements in Blue

Amy Key's Isn't Forever is a spell book for feminine selfhood in a world where a sense of self is flimsy, elusive and unrequited. The poems in this book are obsessive in their desire to construct and breach the terms of their own intimacy. The poems have their own `narrative costume' but are vexed with it, not quite able to master the 'diligence of having a body'. This is a book where a tender and sabotaging shame of aloneness has taken root. Where wants cluster and are at war with each other. Where the heart is at once 'all lurgy' and an 'investment piece' to be saved for best. Where the sea is the only solace, but the sea is blase. The `ta-dah!' and candour of these poems is an exercise in Amy Key's imaginative protection and urge for personal extravaganza, an attempt to acknowledge but fight back the brutal inner voice. The obscure audience of the reader is never out of sight. Amy Key's first collection Luxe was published by Salt in 2013. Isn't Forever, her second book-length collection, is a Poetry Book Society Wildcard Choice.

Isn't Forever

A beautifully presented gift book exploring the sumptuous poetry and images of the Rossettis

The poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and Elizabeth Siddal is brought together here in one volume for the very first time. This exquisite collection is beautifully designed and illustrated with sumptuous Pre-Raphaelite images. Selected by and with an introduction from poet Amy Key, the poems are arranged thematically under the headings Love, Sex, Money, and Death, and are presented anew for a contemporary audience. Dreams of Love is a beautiful object full of romantic appeal.

Rossetti Poetry

Dreams of Love

Ellena Savage

Rebecca May Johnson

Tessa Hadley

Roger Deakin

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Jamal Mahjoub

Jo Hamya

Amy-Jane Beer

Michael Malay

Niellah Arboine

Marchelle Farrell

Essays from the Water's Edge

By the River

This anthology reflects the scale of intensity within female friendships and captures the defining characteristics of this frequently-overlooked relationship: the intimate and the casual, the life sustaining and the life changing, as well as the tensions and the joys.

Best Friends Forever

Amy Key

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