Book of the Month: Good Sons by Tim Craven

We are proud to offer five copies of Good Sons by Tim Craven in our February Book of the Month competition, courtesy of our friends at Blue Diode Press.

To be in with a chance of winning this highly anticipated collection of poetry from a former New Writers Awardee, all you need to do is answer the question at the bottom of the page by midnight on 28 February 2025.

All entrants must reside in the UK and full terms and conditions apply. Check out our competitions page to find more giveaways.

Interview with Tim Craven

How did you first get into writing?

My path into writing poetry began with stand-up comedy. Shortly after completing my undergrad, I started performing stand-up, which taught me transferable lessons in brevity, musicality, and the rhythmic qualities inherent in oral traditions.

While I made a respectable attempt at a comedy career, I eventually grew weary of the long days spent driving across the country for gigs – all while juggling a day job in pharmaceutical sales. Over time, I also became frustrated by the need to discard material that felt emotionally significant but didn’t have obvious comedic merits.

I had always been an avid reader of poetry, which, as someone with dyslexia, provided me with a form of literary nourishment that wasn’t overwhelming. Poetry offered a concentrated artistic experience – an intense hit of language and meaning without the burden of long-form prose, which I often found taxing.

Over the course of a couple of years, I began writing seriously, joined the Willesden Green Writers Group at my local library, and started publishing my work in literary journals. The most transformative moment in my journey, however, was receiving a scholarship to attend Syracuse University’s MFA program – a life-changing opportunity that deepened my commitment to poetry.

What can readers expect from Good Sons?

Good Sons represents over a decade of writing, during which I lived in several cities and transitioned through various stages of life. As a result, the poems are diverse in both theme and style. If I were to describe its underlying framework, I’d draw upon Ezra Pound’s three core elements of poetry: melopoeia (the musicality of language), phanopoeia (the vivid imagery – what Seamus Heaney aptly described as 'description as revelation'), and logopoeia (the intellectual play that makes a poem greater than the sum of its words). My hope is that the best poems in this collection embody all three of these qualities.

In terms of overarching themes, Good Sons explores landscape and place, mental health and familial relationships. With my background in neuroscience, I’m particularly interested in the intersection of physiology, psychiatry and personal perception – how the mind and body influence the realities we construct for ourselves. These ideas subtly underpin much of the collection.