1. The book is beautiful, inside and out Published 75 years ago in 1946, The Story of Three Water Drops was written well before Kathleen Raine became internationally renowned as a world-leading William Blake expert, yet the first of her two children’s books bears many beautiful Blakean influences. The story is as simple as it is profound, narrating the fable-like adventures of three sibling water drops ‘whose home was in the great ocean’, and the book was also delicately

She looks still while she is sleeping, but I know better. Head nestled on a makeshift pillow improvised from a rolled-up jumper and flat, second-hand sofa cushion – even now, diagnosis confirmed, she refuses to take to her bed during the day – Joan’s breathing steadies as she slips deeper into slumber. Unconsciousness is necessary to give her body relief from the gnawing pain that I can tell, however hard she fights to disguise it, increasingly ravages her while awake. In sle

‘I am Queer. I have fallen from the stars in a burning ball of light… the world made me feel like I was too much. I am not... I am not too much for my universe - or for yours.’ (Renée Gerald, Fallen from the Stars). Arkbound is a charity publisher and social enterprise that aims to promote social inclusion, community development and artistic talent: three inspiring aims that are greatly in evidence in their 2021 LGBTQ+ Anthology Writing Our Space. Edited with a light yet imag