Hannah Silva

Crow, Pirate, Fly is a glitching manifesto of pain, pleasure, domination and submission. A power play of identities, authors, lovers and mothers, Hannah Silva’s long-awaited second collection is subversive and compelling, intimate and estranging, animal and alien. Ten years in gestation, this genre-queering text began as a cut up of Kathy Acker’s literary terrorism with one of this century’s most infamous erotic phenomenons, and now emerges as its own thing — dark, wild, innovative and pregnant with desire. There are no safe words.

"Hannah Silva's My Child, the Algorithm, is one of the best books I read this year. Merging the cozy familiarity of child-rearing with the mysterious tension of AI {...}, she has created a new genre of personal narrative, and a story whose grief, hope and curiosity takes on poetic, spiritual dimensions, even when exploring the most common chambers of the human heart." --Michelle Tea, author, Knocking Myself Up My Child, the Algorithm tells a story of finding joy after betrayal. Like a male seahorse, Hannah Silva carried a baby made from her partner's egg. But when she gave birth, her partner left, and Hannah found herself navigating life alone with her child. Hannah started playing with a precursor to ChatGPT--wondering what AI could tell us about love. To her surprise, she was moved by the results. The algorithm prompted Hannah to share her explorations of dating, sex, friendship, and life as a queer parent in London. With the help and disruption of two unreliable narrators, a toddler and an algorithm, Hannah deconstructs her story, unraveling everything she has been taught to want, and finds alternative ways of thinking, loving, and parenting today.

** A Granta Book of the Year 2023 **'Raises the stakes for the rest of us writers' ISABEL WAIDNER'An important new talent' FIONA SHAW'Curious, queer, whip-smart, hilarious and tender' GAIL MCCONNELLA living exploration of undoing and redoing queer single parenting and love, in conversation with an AI algorithm and a toddler. As Hannah Silva navigates friendship, dating and life as a queer single parent in London, her toddler and the algorithm contribute humour, play and insight. With the help/disruption of these unreliable narrators, Hannah deconstructs her story, and constructs a new one. She unravels everything she has been taught to want, finding alternative ways of thinking, loving and parenting today. Queer, creative, sexy and compassionate, My Child, the Algorithm is non-fiction at its finest.

Forms of Protest collects together for the first time the work of Hannah Silva, a poet known for her fearless and wholly original vocal performances. These poems and experimental texts oscillate between sense and nonsense, meaning and music, deconstructing traditional discourse and always testing the limits of language to represent the lived world. Ranging in form from sound poems to collaged spam email, from monologues to lists of insults, and embracing subjects as diverse as war, sexuality and giant squid, Silva's poetry is like nothing else you've read. Hannah Silva is a poet and playwright. She has performed internationally and throughout the UK, including at Latitude Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and on Radio 3. Her solo show Opposition toured in 2011-12 and was described in a five-star review by What's on Stage as "radical, political, courageous". Her writing has been published in the anthologies Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins, 2012; ISBN 9781908058010) and Dear World & Everyone In It (Bloodaxe Books, 2013; ISBN 9781852249496). She lives in Plymouth.

Poetry Book Society Special Commendation for Spring 2012. Welcome to a strange new world in which a poem can be written using only one vowel, processed through computer code, collaged from film trailers, compiled from Facebook updates, hidden inside a Sudoku puzzle, and even painted on sheep. Discover a multitude of new and unusual poetic forms – from tweet to time-splice, and from skinny villanelle to breakbeat sonnet – in this inspiring and inventive anthology. Adventures in Form features over ninety poems by forty-six contributors including Patience Agbabi, Christian Bök, Joe Dunthorne, Inua Ellams, Roddy Lumsden, Ian McMillan, Paul Muldoon, Ruth Padel and Hannah Silva. Editor: Tom Chivers is a writer and literary arts producer. His books include How To Build A City (2009) and The Terrors (2009), which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award. He has edited the Penned in the Margins books Generation Txt (2006), City State: New London Poetry (2009) and Stress Fractures: Essays on Poetry (2010). He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2011. He was also co-Director of London Word Festival from its inception in 2008 until 2011, and was a recipient of a Breakthrough Award from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.