Gold Light Shining
Published by Banshee Press
Within five minutes, I knew
I loved the stranger in my head.
In her debut collection of poetry, Bebe Ashley spins gold from the detritus of the internet. A landscape often depicted as a wasteland is illuminated in poems that explore celebrity, obsession, sexuality, coming of age, and that charismatic enigma, Harry Styles.
Inspired by sources as diverse as Styles’s track listings, Scandi webseries Skam, and One Direction newsletters, Ashley spins us across continents on a tour of the surreal highs and absurd lows of celebrity culture. These are poems of youth and yearning, yet they’re suffused with the hard-won wisdom that the communities we build can be as meaningful as the families we’re born into.
Perceptive, witty, and exuberant, Gold Light Shining introduces an essential new voice; one that captures how pop culture’s Technicolor joy disrupts our greyscale world.
Buy Gold Light Shining from Banshee Press
Recent publications
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[harbour doubts]
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Target Demographic
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“Tom Daley Dives For David Hockney / David Hockney Paints Tom Daley”
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“Sappho, who is doing you wrong”
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“Give Me A Lifetime of Promises (Bonnie Tyler, 1988)”
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Glass Ceilings
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Let's Sign Science & Other Poems
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Let's Sign Minibeasts
—Fortnight Magazine
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Writing Audio Description at the Ulster Museum
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Sappho: A Kintsugi
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Brass & Pearl
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Ink & Hellebore
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from 'there is a reason this is called shame'
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Into the Weeds, FIRST MISTAKE
Non-Fiction
“Once you start learning Braille, you slowly see it everywhere. It’s on the packets of paracetamol at the pharmacy, next to the buttons in the lift, close to the handle on the office door. That isn’t to say Braille is superfluous. It should be much more readily available, in museums, in libraries, in tourist offices and train stations.”
— In the pandemic I learned to Read Again, Trumpet Issue 10
“"Tusind tak!" just happens to be my favourite thank you. A thousand thank yous seems just enough for everyday use, and more than we ever give in English. I’d give you another thousand thank yous for believing me to be a native Danish speaker. A thousand more for not laughing when I said it was the proudest moment of my life and that I was trying to improve my accent.”