erbacce-press started the erbacce-prize for poetry in 2009. An entirely free-to-enter competition designed to attract both new and established writers. We were staggered at the response which produced over fourteen hundred entries from all over the world including the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, all over Europe and Ireland. Four judges took six months to come up with a winner and that winner was              

Puma Perl!

For the past six months we have worked closely with her to produce her 'prize' the truly amazing, provocative and original

knuckle tattoos

To buy this perfect-bound book go

to our 'Shop' pages (top-right)

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Puma Perl’s Knuckle Tattoos is brilliant, perhaps even magnificent, and absolutely stellar. Perl is both poet and anti-poet whose craft is so strong you almost don’t realize you are reading poetry. Funny, sad, angry, curious; Knuckle tattoos takes you a 1000 places from a singular unique voice. When I grow up I wanna write as well as Puma Perl

– jck hnry – writer/with the patience of monuments

  (neoPoiesis Press, 2009)

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Puma Perl writes poems chiselled in granite with fingernails. Her poems ring like Leonard Cohen songs, in line after line of taut language, describing dark emotion and the illusion of structure. She dredges deep and scratches hard to find the crumbs of dazzle in a life of eviction, addiction, pain and loss. The Francis Bacon of poetry, Perl uses language to paint images that maintain a surface clarity, but reverberate far deeper into the dark side of the psyche, without ever straying to cliché. The narrator never blinks at the world where innocence is not allowed as she travels from Dali-esque illusion to deep desperation, and – finally – to the only true resolve: to somehow keep going. The fact that these poems exist  is confirmation of what Bukowski called the goal of poetry: to show the beauty of the horror. Perl succeeds remarkably, with a collection that stands alone for its integrity, guts and revelations.

- Kat Georges, Founder/Editor, Three Rooms Press

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Puma Perl is tough, funny, straight ahead and unforgettable. A survivor with a knockout punch and a heart of gold who claims she never wrote a love poem. But don’t be fooled, Knuckle Tattoos is an epic love poem to the curb and back dressed in leopard print, sporting some fuck me pumps working the thin edge. Puma is jazz, punk and the ghost of Ava Gardner. A subway angel who talks to god, Puma Perl is a perl of a girl and a poet who writes like her heart is on fire.

- S.A. Griffin, Editor, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry

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Also by Puma Perl two chap books; Belinda and her Friends and Ruby True which can be purchased direct from erbacce-sales by clicking HERE to open an email connection

To read a review of Belinda click here... 

...and to find more about this amazing poet click here.