Breakfast with the Scavengers

This book will be released in October 2025.

Pre-orders are charged at time of order and the book will be posted to you as soon as it becomes available.

UK postage is 99 pence per order.

‘Ben Rhys Palmer has an extraordinary gift for building tiny worlds that he allows us to visit through these poems. Populated with ostrich riders, axolotls and luchadores to name a few, each setting is exquisitely detailed and inventively drawn. There’s a rare, playful empathy for all humans and creatures and our interdependencies – the glorious weirdness of these often surreal settings only serves to enhance emotional resonance and connection.’ – Suzannah V. Evans

'Ben Rhys Palmer builds a world in every poem, allowing the reader to live inside it, entertained yet teetering on the precipice of disaster. These poems are romantic, apocalyptic, welcoming, terrifying, funny and heartbreaking all at once.' – Caroline Bird

‘Ben Rhys Palmer is one of the most exciting poetry voices to emerge from Wales for many years. His writing combines a range of transatlantic influences, including James Tate, Charles Simic, Caroline Bird and David Wojahn, and the experience of living abroad, into a rich and individual voice. Here you will find witty and exuberantly imaginative visions of ostrich racing and robot gardeners, alongside beautifully crafted odes to Welsh pop culture heroes like John Cale and Adrian Street. Here, too, you will find tender, huge-hearted, important poems of family and loss, of romantic love and the joy of pets, of empathetic connection to strangers and ancestors. It takes a special writer to build such a varied and successful body of work, and the publication of this collection is an event to be celebrated in writing from Wales.' – Jonathan Edwards

In Ben Rhys Palmer’s joyful debut collection, discombobulated robots rub shoulders with philosophising hyenas, orangutan brides, Mesopotamian fish gods, and a psychotherapist from outer space.

A Welsh poet based in Mexico, his poems about Mexico capture the magic and vibrancy of a country André Breton once described as ‘the most surrealist in the world.’ Other poems pay homage to Welsh cult heroes John Cale and Adrian Street, and Ben’s plucky ancestor, Rebecca Howells, who emigrated to Patagonia after her husband was killed in a mining explosion at Blaengwawr Colliery.

At once funny, tender, and beautifully bizarre, Breakfast with the Scavengers explores love, loss, loneliness, our never-ending quest for connection, and those blink-and-you-miss-them moments of transcendence that can light up our lives.