What happens when missiles meet metaphors, and politics meets poetry?
November 3, 2026, Prolific Pulse Press is proud to release Warheads, the debut poetry collection from London-born writer Edwin Fairbrother. It arrives at a moment when the world may need it most: a sharp, irreverent and often darkly funny book that refuses to glorify war, and asks, again and again, who really pays the price.
About the Collection
In Warheads, Fairbrother takes aim at the machinery of modern conflict: weapons and propaganda, political games and culture wars, refugee crises and the human cost of fighting. The poems lay bare the paradoxical, foolish and ultimately futile nature of war, exploring its causes and consequences through human nature, partisan politics and the environment.
The collection speaks to many kinds of conflict. It moves from the left-right culture war to the plight of refugees, and to the infantry soldiers so often failed by the politics that send them to fight. Its targets range from the military-industrial complex to human nature itself.
Yet this is not a book of despair. Many of the poems return to one conviction: that recognizing our shared humanity matters more than the false promise of conflict as a solution. Alongside the critique, Fairbrother makes room for a hopeful vision of a world with less death and destruction.
The forms are as varied as the subjects. Readers will find simple couplets and haiku, limericks, free verse and longer narrative poems. The collection traces the poet’s own growth, pairing some of his earliest rhyming poems with more accomplished recent work. Several poems first appeared in literary journals including WayWords Literary Journal, The Page Gallery Journal, The Quasar Review, The Raven Review and Enfield Poets Second Anthology.
Warheads also includes discussion questions, making it a natural fit for book clubs, classrooms and anyone ready to talk about war, peace and politics with more than slogans.
Praise for Warheads
“Following the disillusioned path of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but armed with a distinctly modern voice, Warheads proves that poetry can confront power without losing its wit.”
— Munmun Samanta, author of Yellow Chrysanthemum
“A book of anti-war poems, a book for now, a time when war, with its nuclear weaponry, has never been so lethal … These are also peace poems. Warheads is a love poem to the world.”
— Peter Mladinic, author of The Whitestone Bridge
Meet Edwin Fairbrother
Edwin Fairbrother is a writer and poet born and based in London. He holds a bachelor’s degree in media studies and a master’s in music business. After finishing his master’s in 2021, he wrote about music for Alternative Press, Rave Report and Pipeline Artists.
He turned to poetry to voice his frustration with a volatile geopolitical landscape and our increasingly digitized, divided societies, while still finding room for the sparks that give the world its magic. His influences include poets Brian Bilston, Aja Monet and Hussain Manawer, along with George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker.
Since 2025, his poems have appeared in WayWords Literary Journal, The Page Gallery Journal, The Quasar Review, Scribbled, The Raven Review, The Poetry Lighthouse, Masticadores Canada and Enfield Poets Second Anthology. Warheads is his debut collection, with more poetry and fiction on the way.
Follow Edwin on Instagram at @edwinfairbredda_writes for new work and future releases.
