The Only Fear I've Ever Had is Standing Still

In Alvy Carragher’s fourth collection a questioning voice moves between continents and through the fractured landscapes of memory. Poems ask how we continue after a difficult childhood, and how a life might be understood when the past resists any single, coherent narrative. In work that wonders why ‘some days get printed / on the heart’ the poet touches on survival and departure and on how we might go on.

Family is both refuge and source of harm, and father figures cast long shadows over these pages. Generations carry the effects of silence, mental illness and inherited violence, yet the poems remain open to the wider world and to the possibility of kindness. In lines where ‘love [is] like a teaspoon scooping the sun / from a soft-boiled egg’ moments of tenderness become a way of enduring. Energetic, expansive, and empathetic, this courageous book is as disquieting as it is consoling.

Available to Order in October 2026

Book Details

Publication date: October 2026