Soul in a Shell: Poetry + Prose - Paperback

by Dylan James Byall (Author), Nick Kempton (Illustrator), Martha Sprackland (Editor)

Soul in a Shell is a poetry collection that explores what it means to live in an age of noise, numbness, and survival. Written in a minimalist, contemporary style, these poems move through memory, technology, war, disconnection, and the quiet search for belonging.

Drawing from military life, modern love, and the emotional weight of screens and systems, the collection follows a single consciousness moving through many forms-at times fragmented, at times tender, always searching for something human beneath the surface. The poems resist spectacle in favor of restraint, allowing silence, absence, and repetition to carry meaning.

Rather than offering answers, Soul in a Shell creates a space to sit with uncertainty. It reflects on how identity is shaped by pressure-by institutions, expectations, and the digital world-and asks what remains when those structures fall away.

For readers who carry both sorrow and softness, this book is a quiet refuge: a home built of words that is fragile, honest, and lit from within.