First look: Harbour Doubts by Bebe Ashley
We’re thrilled to reveal the cover for our next book, Harbour Doubts by Bebe Ashley, out on 3 July 2025! Harbour Doubts is Bebe’s second collection of poems after 2020’s Gold Light Shining, and was the winner of the 2023 Ivan Juritz Prize. It’s been described as ‘playful and moving’ by Jen Calleja, ‘a joyous celebration of the learning and the loving self’ by Rachael Allen, and ‘a tender and deeply moving collection’ by Stav Poleg. The striking cover is by Jack Smyth.
Every morning I check the kettle for slugs.
In the downstairs hallway, on warmer mornings,
the brocade wallpaper peels from the walls.
On colder nights, it crinkles and cracks appear.
In the right light, I can sometimes see a silver trail
winding along the crevices of the knotted treads.
Bebe Ashley’s prizewinning second collection charts the poet’s efforts to qualify as a British Sign Language interpreter. Intershot with enquiries into the nature of language as it is spoken and signed, and the process of leaving and finding home, Harbour Doubts is a collection that tangles with the burning desire to communicate in the isolation of a late capitalist, post-pandemic world. It’s also a love letter to the delights of linguistics and language, a three-dimensional exploration of words and the body. Bringing together meditations on language as mediated through sound, sign, vision, and film, this exciting sophomore collection cements Bebe Ashley’s reputation as a fearless experimenter.
Bebe Ashley lives in Northern Ireland and works at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. Her debut collection Gold Light Shining (Banshee Press, 2020) was selected for the Arts Council’s Read Mór programme in 2022. Her work is most recently published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, bath magg, and Modern Poetry in Translation. In 2023, Bebe received the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment (Text) and in 2024, she received a British Council Fellowship.
