LOVE ME DO

Lydia Macpherson grew up in the sixties in a small village on top of the Yorkshire Pennines. She now lives in very flat East Anglia. Lydia has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway University of London. She has been placed in several competitions, including the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize. Her poems range from the 'domestic gone awry' to the homeliness of the International Space Station.

'Love Me Do' offers a fresh and distinctive look at how we live our lives. Lydia Macpherson's poems are closely observed, tender, witty and often intensely personal, with subjects ranging from knitting to the far reaches of space, via a Voodoo Barbie and a skeleton under the bed.

Lydia Macpherson's poems take us close to the experience of living - its griefs as well as its pleasures - without any self-pity or unnecessary lingering. They're tough as well as vulnerable - and all the better for it, because in their resilience they engage with the wide world, and ourselves in it. -- Andrew Motion Lydia Macpherson's poems display precision, nous, attractive phrasemaking, an engaging wit, and a debut as surefooted and enjoyable as this deserves to find many readers. -- Paul Farley

Antenatal Space Station Ossuary Europa Voodoo Barbie Curtains from Berlin The Cardigan My Life and Times as a Bird Lessons Her Lovers Miss Guest Virus Armadillos Love Letters 'Leeds Pottery mug, 1780, inscribed "Nanny Hartley drinking green tea" - possibly the Nanny born into the Hartley family at Baildon, Yorkshire in 1750' 19 A Scarf from Africa Delicatessen The Quarry List God's Own County 1962 2CV Sunday Afternoon with Svankmeyer and Popa Pastoral Olive Oil Jack Lithium Lovesong Guantanamo Till Dawn Walking the Woods Paint Ikebana 1969 Siren Song The Burning of the Pets Hefted Ewes The Fisherman Pencils The Winter Outing of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club, December 1870 Invicta Night Song Unterlinden Magpie Funeral In Jim Ede's House Nothing beyond it Glut A Photograph of Ted Biology Afghanistan Twelve Bore The White Peach Surveillance Conjoined Big Bang Day My Pink Artisan Kitchen Aid Chrysalis Nabokov's Butterfly Net Seals at Scolt Head After Vuillard