As If I’m Really There
by Emilie Collyer
Published in 2025 by Vagabond Press
“With a fierce, vulnerable, wayfaring intelligence, Emilie Collyer swerves and weaves through the thickets of bodies, gender, culture and influence like no-one else. As If I’m Really There is a breathtakingly daring and sensitising collection of poems.”
— Andy Jackson
“In this, her follow-up collection to Do You Have Anything Less Domestic?, Collyer extends and deepens the formal and feminist boundaries of her work to impressive effect. This book roams far and wide, moving into the past, nudging the present and winking at the speculative. Pop culture, literary and theatrical works are all present in the heady, febrile swirl of lives examined.”
—Thuy On
About
As If I’m Really There builds thematically and artistically on Emilie Collyer’s award-winning debut collection Do You Have Anything Less Domestic? This second collection digs deeply into Collyer’s avid feminine and feminist interest in the place of the body: what it feels like to have one, how bodies are gendered, assessed, analysed and valued, how the body of an artist and a body of creative work is forged.
Cover image by Daisy Noyes.
This book is released with five others by Vagabond Press. Please consider buying them all as part of a subscription package.