“This is a book that sets out its stall from the first. It opens with a poem containing the tender truths and emotions involved with new parenting, a poem of darks and lights, the sun and the moon. Annie Cowell and Sam Szanto maintain a beautiful, heartfelt conversation, filled with sensitive, startling imagery.
They do not flinch from experiences of fear and worry – indeed they tackle these subjects with strength and tenderness. Subjects such as newborn health, parenthood through different generations, fatigue, growing pains, safety, the empty nest, family traditions, and even the shock of violence are handled with gentleness, a lightness of touch – moments of connectivity allow us to recognise ourselves and our experiences as parents.
You leave this book with a great sense that these two poets have held these poems, as they held their children, skin to skin.”

 

  Jane Burn

“In Splashing Pink Annie Cowell and Sam Szanto observe parents from three generations. Their poems explore the exquisite first encounter with a new-born, the tension when children start to find their own way, the wrench of a teenager leaving home. They rekindle childhood Sunday lunches with parents, and hold back as they watch a son’s experience of parenthood. The poems brim with images and metaphors, moths, blackbirds, berries, rosebuds, and  objects such as  Duplo blocks and thick wool coats. These poems burst with emotion, internalised, controlled, yet poems with which any parent or carer can connect.”

Kate Rose

“Annie Cowell and Sam Szanto have created a tender and insightful conversation-in-poems about the fears, anxieties, and beauty of motherhood. From night lights and night terrors, to first days at school and the ‘unromantic stuff of our kingdom’, this pamphlet invites readers to listen in on two poets trading life stories, perspectives, and common ground in a series of vulnerable and powerfully connected poems.”

John Challis

​​

​