Rabbitbox

Author: Holloway-Smith, Wayne

Poetry

Published on 12 March 2026 by Simon & Schuster Ltd (Scribner UK) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 144 pages
135 x 216 x 16 | 166g

Powerful Intense and unforgettable’ MAX PORTERIm blown away An astonishing work’ AMY KEYAmazing Truly a feat’ RAYMOND ANTROBUSDevastating, sharp with skilfully wrought language, this book is an ambitious leap into a lyricism that dissembles Guardian–A transfixing, heart-rending work which follows a mother and her young son living under the shadow of an all-consuming domestic threat, by T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Wayne Holloway-Smith.

24 Coalbrook Street. The house is trembling with a father’s anger. It makes a rabbit of a young boy,sends him burrowing into a wardrobe, and leaves his mother standing hapless and mute over the kitchen sink. In this house, how far can a mothers comfort travel?From the safety of his hiding place, from the magnitude of his fear, a young girl appears offering a way out. Taking him by the hand, reaching through time, she leads him elsewhere; a mothers love dreaming him away from their reality to the promise beautiful yet flickering of a river.

Haunting, precise and tender, RABBITBOX heralds a major new work from one of Britain’s most exciting writers.

–It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape… RABBITBOX is my book of 2026. – JOELLE TAYLOR