BOOKS

Retablo for a door

Shearsman Books, forthcoming in January 2026

A retablo is a painting created in thanks for divine protection or a miracle. In this luminous collection, Michelle Penn transposes the art form into poems that explore aspects of the female experience. Her retablos capture moments of vulnerability, confrontations with politics and societal ideals, the struggle to construct a self, and the search for something to believe in when protection and miracles seem rare. A rich palette of images — from nuclear blast glass and an atomic Madonna to a sword-swallowing Pierrot and a muse-for-hire — creates a compelling picture of endurance, defiance, and ultimately, hope.

Availability and ordering information to come on this site and on Shearsman's website.

BOOKS

Paper Crusade

Arachne Press, 2022

A book-length poem re-imagining The Tempest as a tragedy.

'A visionary, intertextual journey that takes us far beyond standard retelling or response

to Shakespeare. Penn brings new life to the characters here, with an incantatory power

that threatens to lose us in the words and the waves but always takes us somewhere

captivating and unexpected.'

Luke Kennard, cover blurb

'There must be something of Prospero in @mich_penn, because #PaperCrusade

is utterly mesmeric & captivating.'
Jade Marshall, Shout About Books, Instagram

'Penn's poems draw on and move beyond the intertextual reverberations of Shakespeare's

play to unfold themselves in voices that are both archetypal and unpredictable...Through

imaginative experiments in form and punctuation, space and silence, line and stanza break...

Penn skilfully reframes the drama, the questions, the voices and their authority.

Lesley Sharpe, review, Alchemy Spoon

Order from Arachne Press

Paper Crusade has itself been reimagined as a theatre piece, 'Storm Child.' It's a collaboration

with Théatre Volière as part of the Poetry Plays festival at The Cockpit Theatre, London, 18-20 April, 2024.