The FT reviews Janice Warman's 'impressive debut' and The Yorkshire Times admires the 'dark underbelly of Glasgow' in cosy crime 'The Devil's Draper'!
- Isabelle Kenyon
- Feb 2
- 2 min read
Delighted to see our first 2026 title reviewed in The Financial Times this morning! Tender poetry collection 'These are the Things we Have Lost' by Janice Warman, which transports us to a childhood spent in South Africa to the hills of East Sussex. First print run with beautiful painted edges as below!
'An afterword reveals that a few of the poems in Janice Warman’s impressive debut, These are the things we have lost (Fly on the Wall, £11.99), were written while horse riding in East Sussex. She can be far from bucolic, however; “I am a repository / for the fist” (“Body Blow”), while “Mugabe” identifies tyrants who can just as easily live in a “semi-detached in Leeds”. “Ballet” observes tartly that “there are some things you can fake: / Blondeness, wit, intelligence . . . Ballet isn’t one of them.” Other poems deal with the death of a mother (“so little and lost / in that big cherrywood box”), and, in the title poem, the decline of a difficult father, no less a loss for being a relief. Here artfulness doesn’t impede accessibility.'
- Suzy Feay, The Financial Times
ISBN: 9781915789525
RRP: £11.99
Pub date: 12/01/2026
82 pp
198 × 129 mm
Janice Warman says... “Growing up in apartheid South Africa affected me profoundly. Being a feminist in a country that was inherently violent towards women, particularly black women – birthing and growing your own children and how that takes you back to your own childhood in that faraway place – grieving your mother while she is still alive and suffering with dementia thousands of miles away. Poetry is the means by which I write most deeply and passionately about my real life, the life that runs below my work life like an underground river. The things that demand that I take up my pen.”
Janice Warman is an award-winning writer of YA fiction, non-fiction and poetry, financial journalist, and a creative writing tutor at Share Community for disabled adults, based in East Sussex. Her poetry has been published in magazines in the UK and South Africa, in The Hey Nonny Handbook, the women’s literary survival guide (Harriman House), in Ballet, a poetic and photographic tribute to her mother (Susakpress/Spiralbound) and in English textbooks in South Africa. She is a past winner of the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society Folio Competition.
And this weekend in The Yorkshire Times...
Cosy crime series no.2 'The Devil's Draper' by Donna Moore was reviewed over the weekend!
'Moore’s descriptions of the period are detailed: the Dadaist Art movement, the suppers, the dancing, the fashions, the wares on display in the grand shops contrast with the dark underbelly of Glasgow and its criminal world, all adding to the atmosphere and creating an authentic sense of time and place.' - Ann Artis, The Yorkshire Times
ISBN: 9781915789402
RRP: £11.99
Format: BC
276 pp
198 × 129 × 19 mm
Thema: FFH
BISAC: FIC014000
Expecting book 3 in the series next year!
Two very different books but both sound like exactly the kind of writing that earns proper critical attention. The FT quote about artfulness not impeding accessibility says everything about why Janice Warman's poetry works and her note about poetry being the underground river beneath her work life is a beautiful way to put it. The Devil's Draper contrasting Dadaist art and grand shop displays against Glasgow's criminal underworld sounds like a rich period atmosphere. Came across a literary reviews roundup over at https://direwolfseo.co.uk/ covering debut collections and cosy crime that felt very relevant here. Strong start to 2026 for Fly on the Wall.
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Always exciting to see debut work getting this kind of thoughtful attention. The contrast between Warman’s reflective, memory-driven poetry and the darker edge highlighted in The Devil’s Draper makes this a really interesting snapshot of how varied and fearless contemporary writing can be.