Jen Dunn's first collection of poems is a stark and, in places, raw read. Terse yet vivid lines examine a range of experiences in the life of a medical professional. The colours and sounds of an orthopaedic surgeon's daily interventions are contrasted with the mournful internal dialogue of psychoanalysis. This collection marks the emergence of a new voice with rich experience of trauma in its variant forms, and an impressive range of poetic instruments with which to investigate those experiences.

(Andy Jackson, poet)

‘Throughout 'The Sounds That Men Make' Allan Gaw, like a ethnographic cartographer, maps the difficult, often treacherous and at times absurd landscape of contemporary masculinities. Inhabiting diverse personae and positions, including alien observers, he navigates the sensitivities and conundrums, the bonds and the rivalries, contradictory role models, the inherited behaviours and prejudices, internal conflicts, the joys, desires, the fears, along with the silences and struggles to overcome expectations and stereotypes. Gaw presents a topography of masculine voices, asking which we identify with, which we recognise, which we react against, and in doing so opens up a much-needed discussion on what it means to be a man in the 21st Century.’

(Bob Beagrie, writer)