Rabbitbox by Wayne Holloway-Smith

‘Powerful… Intense and unforgettable' MAX PORTER‘I’m blown away… An astonishing work' AMY KEY‘Amazing… Truly a feat' RAYMOND ANTROBUS--A transfixing, heart-rending work which follows a mother and her young son living under the shadow of an all-consuming domestic threat, by T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Wayne Holloway-Smith.

24 Coalbrook Street. The house is trembling with a father's anger. It makes a rabbit of a young boy, sends him burrowing into a wardrobe, and leaves his mother standing hapless and mute over the kitchen sink.

In this house, how far can a mother’s comfort travel?From the safety of his hiding place, from the magnitude of his fear, a young girl appears offering a way out. Taking him by the hand, reaching through time, she leads him elsewhere; a mother’s love dreaming him away from their reality to the promise – beautiful yet flickering – of a river. Haunting, precise and tender, RABBITBOX heralds a major new work from one of Britain's most exciting writers.--

‘It takes a rare poet to make such magic of such brutality, but Holloway-Smith is the rarest kind: tender, curious, vivid, and wild. He bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies, the idea of escape... RABBITBOX is my book of 2026.’ - JOELLE TAYLOR 

Format:Paperback / softback 144 pages
Publisher:Simon & Schuster Ltd
Imprint:Scribner UK
ISBN:9781398552425
Published:12 Mar 2026
Classifications:Poetry, Poetry by individual poets, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Fiction: special features