Skinny Dipping in Tiger Country is not a title you easily forget – and neither is the wonderfully bold cover, with its flowing stripes, designed by Jamie last October. It’s immediately evocative; I don’t know about you, but for me it conjures up lush, jungly plants, warm water, and tigers creeping through the undergrowth (as illustrated above!)
Maithreyi Hughes’ debut poetry collection arrives from Valley Press on 30th July, and it is lively and distinctive – witty, observant and playful, but with sudden moments of real tenderness and political bite. The poems move between India and Wales, family and marriage, migration and language, colonial history, food, landscape, grief and love. The humour keeps catching you off guard: a parsnip is described as “a carrot that had seen a ghost”.
That mixture of humour and honesty runs throughout the collection. In ‘Imperial Lather’, Maithreyi remembers her grandfather’s fondness for imported Imperial Leather soap. When she asks whether it will make their skin like leather, he replies:
“It is lather misspelt … The English are bad spellers.”
The poet then ponders whether he was “an imperialist”. It is funny, affectionate and quietly pointed – a family memory that opens onto something much larger.
Elsewhere, the poems are softer and more intimate. One of my favourites is this small, lovely poem:
Distance Soup
I would trade some of the fondness
to reduce the distance
to skin deep
and still have enough left over
for a lifetime of elevenses.Dear heart, when you come home
I will make a bonfire of the finest poetry
of love and longing
and heat your soup on it.
There is something very characteristic of the collection in that ending: romantic, but not overly solemn; clever, but still warm and human. Even its love poems keep one foot in the everyday.
The title poem is more exhilarating and unruly, full of kingfishers, leeches, peacocks, fish, moss and “seditious water”. Skinny dipping becomes an act of courage, freedom and joyful rebellion – a state of undress, but also a state of mind.
And it ends with the wonderfully disarming admission:
I write drunk –
edit in October.
The collection’s full ‘dust jacket’.
When I asked Jamie what first drew him to Maithreyi’s collection, originally submitted in 2023, he said:
“It’s serious, but also fun – which is very much my kind of thing, as you know. I was fascinated by Maithreyi’s journey from India to Wales, and impressed by her literary track record up to this point (mostly under her maiden name, Karnoor); the poems have previously appeared in The Poetry Review, PN Review, Poetry London and, of course, Poetry Wales. Also, her background as a native speaker of Kannada, a classical Indian language, adds real freshness to her work in English, something that can’t be learnt. Every word is just a little bit surprising. A real treat!”
The author herself commented, in typically poetic phrasing:
“When the abstraction of poetry lands on a page, it shows you the shape of your thoughts. And when many poems come together in a book, it shows you the shape of your mind. I’m grateful and surprised by how beautiful Valley Press has made me look!”
Long-time followers may not be so surprised! 😝 We always strive to make beautiful, high-quality books – but Maithreyi’s writing was already beautiful. We simply wanted to give it the presentation it deserved.
Maithreyi holding Skinny Dipping in Tiger Country, near her home on the Welsh coast.
Skinny Dipping in Tiger Country is a generous, wide-ranging collection – curious about language, history, and the complicated business of belonging, while remaining rooted in the vivid, intimate details through which a life is lived.
Published in hardback by Valley Press on 30 July 2026 and available to order now, with a £5 launch discount.
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