Released December 31st, 2021 // 36 pages // 978-1-913642-76-1
Stuart McPherson's Waterbearer is a pamphlet dedicated 'to the survivors', focusing on an adult coming to terms with a traumatic childhood. McPherson's poetry is gripping and of immediate emotional depth, with rawness and rough edges, as if every line were painted black and tattooed to the page. Haunting and haunted, "like snow / for the beautiful dead" Waterbearer is a remarkable pamphlet, irrepressible like an asteroid tearing through the atmosphere, leaving exit wounds.
* FIRST 40 COPIES SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR*
PRAISE FOR WATERBEARER:
'In Waterbearer, Stuart McPherson looks at family trauma and what it means to be a male survivor of sexual abuse with unflinching honesty and keen intelligence. There is a gentleness to these poems, an illumined quality, even as they explore the aftermath of trauma: the loneliness, the disassociation, its effect on one's closest relationships, and ultimately, survival. Refreshing and innovative in form and language, Stuart McPherson builds "a sudden meaningfulness" again and again, bringing brilliant insight and lyrical surprise to these pages. Waterbearer is deeply thoughtful, emotionally resonant, and lingering'
- Anindita Sengupta, Walk Like Monsters (PoetryWala / Paperwall Media 2016)
Stuart McPherson is a poet from Leicester in the United Kingdom. His debut pamphlet ‘Pale Mnemonic’ was published in April 2021 by Legitimate Snack. The pamphlet ‘Water Bearer’ will be published in December 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. His work explores the relationship between family dysfunction, trauma, and fragile masculinity.
