Kitty Hawkins’ first collection These Yellow Days is haunted by the birth and death of an idealised adulthood. Its extinction, in the form of a dead woman, haunts the poems, observing erosion, dunescapes, femininity, rebirth.

Set largely in the blustery yet desolate expanses of a coastal landscape, These Yellow Days uses speculative and imaginative juxtapositions as a means of rewriting memories, particularly interactions with those the poet holds most dear. A ghost-like water leaks through the pages, giving and taking life simultaneously. What remains is the sharp and vulnerable, which, like an onshore breeze, scours the natural for hope.