Ralf Webb for Highway Cottage

'Stunning ... a masterful exploration of the past, the present, the political, and the pastoral in all its spectre' RACHEL LONG

Join us for an evening with critically acclaimed poet Ralf Webb to celebrate his second collection, Highway Cottage.

Following his Forward-prize shortlisted Rotten Days in Late Summer, Ralf Webb's breath-taking second poetry collection summons the West Country of his youth, a place where the real and the magical, folklore and modernity, life and death, collide

Highway Cottage weaves the story of a strange homecoming. A young poet travels to the heart of the English countryside - back to the West Country village where he grew up. Descending into the valley where the small riverside community still resides, he finds himself within a dreamlike landscape, peopled by uncanny figures: drone operators and hunters; half-familiar friends; local historians, and braying councillors trying desperately to oust a community of Travellers. Hovering between reality and folklore, the locale is at once idyllic and in decay; the visitor is both unsettled and soothed by it. Slowly, we start to sense that both villagers and poet might be under threat - not just from the future, but from the past.

Ralf Webb is the author of Rotten Days in Late Summer, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the nonfiction book Strange Relations, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His poems, essays, and fiction have appeared widely, including in the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, Granta and the Guardian.