New book

Stutter & LiSp – A Reckoning in Poetry & Paint is the new book from Simon J Houlton from Hastings, published independently under his own imprint Pigritudous Art.

It is priced £11.99 and available from Amazon, ISBN: 9798185361627 (paperback only).

Simon said: “The idea behind Stutter & LiSp is pretty straightforward. It is, as titled, a reckoning in poetry and paint. The odd thing about it is that I never planned to write a poetry book. I had previously thought of myself as a novelist and a painter and wasn’t particularly looking for a new creative outlet.

“Having said that, poetry is something I have been indulging in since I was a teenager. I always treated it as an outlet, disposable thoughts, a way of processing complex feelings. Over the years, I have written and discarded hundreds of poems without much thought about it one way or the other.

“This all changed when I published my first novel, The Night Swimmer, in early 2025. The thing about achieving such a lifelong dream is that you’re never really prepared for what comes after. The process of promotion and trying to put the thing in front of strangers wasn’t really something I had ever thought about. It quickly became quite overwhelming,

“Normally, when I’m feeling excessive levels of frustration, I paint or write. Painting was out of the question as economic woes meant I couldn’t afford paint or canvas. Writing the second novel wasn’t quite ready to come and an equally troubling source of psychological discomfort.

“So I embraced poetry; it’s delightfully cheap. I ended up writing a huge number of poems over the following months, often in bars or on public transport.

“I realised that the voice in the poems was the same as the voice in my paintings and my novel. I’m expressing myself through different mediums, but the core voice, themes, and obsessions remain the same; it amounts to a singular artistic identity. The paintings aren't illustrations of the poems and the poems aren't captions for the paintings. They are two different ways of saying essentially the same things.

“That became the idea behind Stutter & LiSp: A Reckoning in Poetry & Paint.

“The poems cover quite a range of topics. There is childhood humiliation in Punchline, and the school-to-dole queue expressway in E is for English. Sir Ox Hat deals with darker personal experiences involving medication, crisis and institutional violence. Factor Eight –

Tainted Blood looks back at the contaminated blood scandal of the 80s and 90s through the experience of a childhood friend. Twenty-Five Steps is concerned with class and the justice system while The Betrayal of Pigeons starts with pigeons and gradually turns into a metaphor for working-class people who were useful until they weren't.

“Then there are other poems about loneliness, drinking, desire, technology and mortality. Overall, there are twenty poems in the collection and six paintings.

“So although there are recurring themes and obsessions throughout, I would perceive it as something that is working on a few different levels rather than one single overarching message. In some ways it is colliding with itself; there is deep tenderness alongside apoplectic rage. The individual in the face of the institution and society itself.

“I think it is a collection that may appeal to people who maybe don’t consider themselves as normal poetry readers. The poems are direct. They tell stories. There is little pretension there; they aren’t trying to prettify anything or make the ordinary experience of day-to-day life sound any more than what it is. There are cats, warm beer, overflowing ashtrays, hospitals, courtrooms and plenty of bad decisions. There is ugliness but also beauty and humour.”