Elsa and the Wolfman by Eoghan Walls

Elsa and the Wolfman by Eoghan Walls

Elsa and the Wolfman is a powerful, lyrical duet between father and newborn daughter, written in two contrasting voices. The father, poet and caregiver, uses classical forms to wrestle with anxieties of raising a child and growing older, while Elsa’s lines – willful, instinctive, curious – dart across the page countering and shaping him.

Intimate, moving, funny and sensitive to harm, the collection explores their bond as they navigate a world beset by pandemics, feathered dinosaurs, kidney stones, cruelty in the borderlands, and stark fairy-tale nightmares. From waking in a smoky house to the Wolfman letting a bat out of a window, it is a book of love, learning, and the profound, playful bond between father and daughter.

Eoghan Walls is a Northern Irish poet. Born in Derry, educated in Wales and Ireland, he has lived in Germany, Rwanda and now teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University. He has published two previous collections of poetry with Seren Books – The Salt Harvest (2011) and Pigeon Songs *(2019) – and two novels with Seven Stories Press – *The Gospel of Orla (2023) and Fieldnotes from an Extinction (2026) – and translated the first major volume of Heidegger’s poetry. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006 and has been shortlisted for many other awards, including the Manchester Poetry Prize and the Piggot Poetry Prize.