In Stories & Lies these very different poets  – Pamela Johnson, Jennifer Grigg and Jane Kirwan – create the stories that need to be told in order to explore ideas of belonging and leaving, exile and expatriation, family and self. In poems that range from the surreal to the conversational we glimpse relationships across generations, moving from Ireland to the north of England to New England via the Midwest and Eastern Europe.

From the most intimate poems to the expansive, these portraits reveal the universal in the personal, the extraordinary in these ‘ordinary’ families.