The Emma Press Anthology of Aunts: Poems About Aunts - Tapa blanda

At one remove from parental authority, aunts play a crucial role in the upbringing of children across the world. This anthology puts these women in the spotlight and explores what it means to be and feels like to have an aunt, historically and today. Some aunts are biological, some are chosen, but all have an impact on the way we learn to move through the world.

Poets in this volume tell stories of glamorous confidants, akin to older siblings, introducing their charges to new clothes and music, and of older women, tough and worldly-wise, who offer their nieces and nephews a different perspective on life. The contributors consider the role of aunts in large, close-knit families where sharing childcare is a welcome relief, and the thrill of a yearly visit from a fascinating near-stranger.

Aunts appear as surprising, reassuring, role models and counter-examples. Above all, the book restores their centrality to young people s development and to family life

Rachel Piercey is a former editor at The Cadaverine magazine and a current editor at the Emma Press. Her illustrated pamphlet of love poems, The Flower and the Plough, was published by the Emma Press in 2013 and her second pamphlet, Rivers Wanted, in 2014. Emma Wright worked in ebook production at Orion Publishing Group before leaving to set up the Emma Press in 2012. In 2013 she toured the UK with The Mildly Erotic Poetry Tour, supported with funding from Arts Council England as part of the Lottery-funded Grants for the arts programme.