Don’t Use the Phone

Don’t Use the Phone shows how poets can improve their writing by swapping smartphones for books. Championing the ‘slim volume’ as the best arena in which poetry can be appreciated, McDonald gives an accessible introduction to seventeen modern poetry collections, explaining how poets can use them in their own creative development. 

Covering a range of themes including ecology, humour, mortality, philosophy, place, and race, the book mixes criticism with creative writing advice to provide a groundbreaking and indispensable course in poetry writing. 

About the author: 

Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty-five years, where he ran the Creative Writing Programme. He took early retirement in 2019 to write full time. He is the author of over twenty books, covering fiction, poetry, and scholarship. His creative work has won, and been shortlisted for, numerous prizes including Artlyst Art to Poetry Award, The Bedford Prize, The Bridport Prize, The John Clare Poetry Prize, the Liverpool Poetry Prize, the Ottakars/Faber and Faber Poetry Competition, the Pushcart Prize (nomination), the Sentinel Poetry Prize, the Sentinel Short Story Prize, and the Retreat West Flash Fiction Prize. 

No of Pages: 170 pp 

ISBN: 978-1-910996-62-1