ARIaNA REINES: A fierce feminist Poetry Night

Join us for an Edinburgh launch of one of our most anticipated books of 2026: The Rose by Ariana Reines!

The Rose navigates the intersection of power and surrender. Drawing on the history of ‘romance’ as the troubadours knew it, and the titular flower’s ancient allegories for sexuality and mystery, award-winning poet Ariana Reines plunges into feminine archetypes to explore masculine pain:

‘I have always liked helpless / & terrible men because they break my mind.’

In these poems, inherited ideologies of gender performance are replaced with bold vulnerability: paradoxes of power and surrender transmute the speaker’s understanding of suffering, desire, and the soul. The voice in The Rose is wry and bare, approaching the connection between erotic love and spirituality with humour. Investigating war, maternity, violent sensuality, and the role of language in magical acts, Reines is unafraid to uncover the ‘secret / & terrible shovelings / Of love,’ and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom.

About the author: Ariana Reines is an award-winning poet, playwright, and performing artist from Salem, Massachusetts. Her books include 2020 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner, A Sand Book, and Alberta Prizewinning The Cow. Her play, Telephone, won two Obies and has been performed internationally. In 2020, she founded Invisible College, a study hall for poetry, ancient texts, and the arts. She lives in New York City.