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Press Release Four Windows On The Male
First published in the UK 2025.
All About Arts & Wylde Publications
Authors: Veronica Aaronson, Steve Day, Roger Philip Dennis, Kerry Priest
Title: Four Windows On The Male
Format: Poetry/Literature/Arts
Release date: March 2025
“Whether he and I are alike, just wrapped in different skin… if he holds the same affection
for me as I do for him – questions that would have
made my father flinch.”
Riace Warrior, Veronica Aaronson
“…to find the beginning where water weeps
clean from an edifice of lime and he can drink
with birds and mountain men.
Long Trek Out Of Rousseau, Steve Day
“How come there is no crucifix between my antlers
but a blind devil grown old from riding the storm?”
How Come, Roger Philip Dennis
“… As we forgive those who trespass against us
any suspicious behaviour will be reported to the authorities…”
St Davids, Kerry Priest
Is the male an endangered species?
Aaronson, Day, Dennis and Priest view masculinity via poetry through four individual windows. They do not attempt consensus, nevertheless, together they do pool understandings of ‘men’. Why male rather than female? Because history and culture has for so long been predominantly “his story” and the “he” has shaped the world we all inherit.
In this book Aaronson, Day, Dennis and Priest emerge quite differently as they speak to what they see. Dennis’ “blind devil grown old from riding the storm” begins to look lost in uncertainty, revealing how limiting and harmful traditional male roles and patterns of behavior have become. Aaronson pursues avenues public as well as personal, young and old, animal and saintly. Day rejects the poisoned wells of violence, ambition, confusion and abuse; his lone trekker seeking a place where “...he can drink with birds and mountain men.” This theme is given additional insight by Priest - an eco-feminist, calling out the dual oppression of male dominance and capitalism from the lens of growing up working class in northern industrial towns in the 1980s.
Four Windows On The Male is a different kind of poetry collection. Rather than an anthology, it’s a provocative project by four key collaborative poets finding each individual window offers an opportunity for common ground.
Janet Sutherland writes about Four Windows On The Male
This is a striking collection by four very individual poets. It opens many different windows on attitudes and behaviours around maleness and explores them with a glorious thoroughness. The reader is constantly surprised and delighted by the freshness of their vision, their innovative ways of looking. These poems are by turns devastating, playful, political, wry, angry, tender and everything else in between. What is it to be male? These thought-provoking poems offer succinct visions or versions of the complex ideas around masculinity, and how toxic masculinity affects women and girls. They look at youth and age, family relationships, history, story, longing, grief. They look both slant and straight on and in doing what all good poems do, they crack open their subject and make it sing.
Wylde Publications
First published in the UK 2025.
All About Arts & Wylde Publications
Authors: Veronica Aaronson, Steve Day, Roger Philip Dennis, Kerry Priest
Title: Four Windows On The Male
Format: Poetry/Literature/Arts
Release date: March 2025
“Whether he and I are alike, just wrapped in different skin… if he holds the same affection
for me as I do for him – questions that would have
made my father flinch.”
Riace Warrior, Veronica Aaronson
“…to find the beginning where water weeps
clean from an edifice of lime and he can drink
with birds and mountain men.
Long Trek Out Of Rousseau, Steve Day
“How come there is no crucifix between my antlers
but a blind devil grown old from riding the storm?”
How Come, Roger Philip Dennis
“… As we forgive those who trespass against us
any suspicious behaviour will be reported to the authorities…”
St Davids, Kerry Priest
Is the male an endangered species?
Aaronson, Day, Dennis and Priest view masculinity via poetry through four individual windows. They do not attempt consensus, nevertheless, together they do pool understandings of ‘men’. Why male rather than female? Because history and culture has for so long been predominantly “his story” and the “he” has shaped the world we all inherit.
In this book Aaronson, Day, Dennis and Priest emerge quite differently as they speak to what they see. Dennis’ “blind devil grown old from riding the storm” begins to look lost in uncertainty, revealing how limiting and harmful traditional male roles and patterns of behavior have become. Aaronson pursues avenues public as well as personal, young and old, animal and saintly. Day rejects the poisoned wells of violence, ambition, confusion and abuse; his lone trekker seeking a place where “...he can drink with birds and mountain men.” This theme is given additional insight by Priest - an eco-feminist, calling out the dual oppression of male dominance and capitalism from the lens of growing up working class in northern industrial towns in the 1980s.
Four Windows On The Male is a different kind of poetry collection. Rather than an anthology, it’s a provocative project by four key collaborative poets finding each individual window offers an opportunity for common ground.
Janet Sutherland writes about Four Windows On The Male
This is a striking collection by four very individual poets. It opens many different windows on attitudes and behaviours around maleness and explores them with a glorious thoroughness. The reader is constantly surprised and delighted by the freshness of their vision, their innovative ways of looking. These poems are by turns devastating, playful, political, wry, angry, tender and everything else in between. What is it to be male? These thought-provoking poems offer succinct visions or versions of the complex ideas around masculinity, and how toxic masculinity affects women and girls. They look at youth and age, family relationships, history, story, longing, grief. They look both slant and straight on and in doing what all good poems do, they crack open their subject and make it sing.
Wylde Publications
