A man stands in the centre of a stone circle. Around him spin the stories of Neolithic builders, Russian spies and demanding elders.
Can we truly speak this language, or do the word merely flow through us, outside of our control?
Will Harris is the author of the poetry books RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), both published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan in the US, and the essay Mixed-Race Superman (Peninsula Press). He has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He co-translated Habib Tengour’s Consolatio (Poetry Translation Centre) with Delaina Haslam in 2022, and helps facilitate the Southbank New Poets Collective with Vanessa Kisuule. Siblings, a conversation between Harris, Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, and Nisha Ramayya, was published by Monitor Books in February 2024. The darkly atmospheric images in Speakee Stonehenge are by David Sims, a British photographer.
‘As the train arrived at Salisbury, I imagined it from the perspective of a spy. The words had to speak through me. Our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town, I said. The famous 123-metre spire. The first clock to be invented in the world, and it’s still going. I was coming to Stonehenge almost a year after the visit of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (not their real names). I bought an Americano from Costa and looked at the cathedral. The next day, after seeing the cathedral, Petrov and Boshirov travelled to Stonehenge. They said there was snow. Eddies of snow looping between the gaps in the monument. Circles within circles. Does a spy really look at Stonehenge, or only pretend to? I went to speak to Gary, who worked in heritage. I was a writer, but also a spy. I do believe the stones speak, said Gary. It just takes a while to tune in. Petrov later said of Stonehenge: On the 4th, yes. We saw them.’
Each Handbook is published in an edition limited to 25 copies, and priced at £12.50. We’ll be selling them at the books’ launch and at The Free Verse Book and Magazine Fair on 26th April 2025. If you’d like to order copies, please email us and we can sort out PayPal and postage.