Released November 30th 2021 // 32 pages // 978-1-913642-92-1
 
In Monomaniac Liam Bates monopolises the prefix mono, each title beginning there, and though the titles are monomorphic the poems are anything but, always offering acute detail and humour. Bates writes with an eye open for the stranger aspects of modern life, confronting the self, adolescence and mental illness, never monotonous, his is a surrealism completely his own, rooted in the more than real. The central paradox here is: must we be defined by a defining moment? When a fifty-foot monolith appears in the garden, for example. Monomaniac showcases a special talent, writing in full technicolour.
 
PRAISE FOR MONOMANIAC:
'The intriguing tension in these poems comes from that prefix “mono”, to mean single, or only one; this is work which constantly wrestles with the notion that, deep down, we know that any poem, like the self and like any experience, cannot be singular.   “I no longer believe in one great truth” declares one of the pamphlets final poems- here we see the aftermath and the beauty  of what lays at the other side of that realisation.'
— Andrew McMillan
 
25mm Monomaniac pin badge available for £1 extra with order.
 
Liam Bates is a poet from the Black Country, with work shortlisted for prizes by Magma, Bridport and Creative Future. His pamphlets ‘Working Animals’ and ‘Monomaniac’ are available from Broken Sleep Books, with his full-length collection due summer 2022. Liam lives in Cambridge.