Bring Down the Haus: JLM Morton

We are pleased to welcome back JLM Morton for the launch of her second poetry collection, Borrowed Ground.

Borrowed Ground is JLM Morton's second full collection, a reckoning with land, climate grief, and the entanglement of human and more-than-human life. Rooted in the woodland and river country of the west of England, the poems move between close observation and myth: a central creation sequence follows a black pine through litany and shaped, fragmenting text, while a closing sequence stages the drowning and mythic rebirth of Sabrina, goddess of the Severn. Morton works through erasure, found material, and liturgical forms without losing lyric precision, holding ecological dread against humour, domestic comfort, and ancient, feminist modes of knowing.

Come along and hear JLM (and other poets tbc). Tickets cost £7 and include a glass of wine or a soft drink. Presented by bookhaus.

JLM Morton is a writer, celebrant and creative producer based in the west of England. Her poetry has featured on BBC6 Music and is widely published, including in Poetry Review, Poetry London, Rialto, Magma, Mslexia, and The London Magazine. Winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer, Laurie Lee and Poetry Archive Worldview Prizes, her debut poetry collection was Red Handed (Broken Sleep Books, 2024), highly commended by the Forward Prizes and a Poetry Society book of the year. Her first nonfiction book is forthcoming in Spring 2027.