Our featured publication for January and February 2024 is Collecting the Data by Mat Riches, published by Red Squirrel Press.

Mat Riches offers a rare treat in this debut collection. In a voice that’s variously wry, thoughtful, witty and emotive, he explores a variety of relationships. Prepare to meet his family, but also his tomato plants, a weather balloon, a troublesome supertanker, a fisherman’s pond and the Arecibo Telescope. At one point, he finds himself with his head ‘wedged in the freezer’. This is—yes—funny, but this poet is not just out for laughs. He writes from an unusual angle and it’s deliberate. He uses words to write about silence. Expect the unexpected.

‘Mat Riches is a specialist in the humorous use of the serious and the serious use of the humorous, channelled through a playful but yoked relish for language.‘ Matthew Stewart

‘These poems show us love, with all its limits, hopes and regrets, its crucial specificities of Sunblest, the Wim Hof Method and buttered dogs. They’re heartfelt but not saccharine, often funny but never cynical. Most importantly, they ring true, like the birdsong from the poem ‘A Foley Artist Works from Home’: “only ever birds / being themselves”.‘ Ramona Herdman

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Previously published in The High Window

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Previously published in Algebra of Owls

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Previously published in The Honest Ulsterman

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Previously published in Ink Sweat and Tears

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Mat Riches is from Norfolk, but lives in Beckenham. He has previously worked in a plastics factory, a variety of pubs, and a book wholesaler, but currently works in market research and as ITV’s (unofficial) poet-in-residence. He’s also a trainee Bongosero. When he’s not doing those things, he’s either being a parent, a husband or running. Sometimes all of them at once. He co-runs Rogue Strands poetry evenings, and blogs at Wear The Fox Hat. One of these facts is not true.

Copies of Collecting the Data can be purchased from the Red Squirrel Press website, here.