‘The world was getting dark, and they willed it on. After a wrong turn, a bad guess, they walked a road familiar to neither of them.’

Will and Jay haven’t slept for days. After meeting at a party, they’ve gone back to Will’s flat where they can chat and kiss and fuck forever—but something else happens. In the aftermath of what he believes to be a haunting, and troubled by the memory of a radio show from his childhood, Will lands in America and embarks on an all-consuming journey. The first novel from poet Robyn Skyrme, Old Owl and Matt is a queer road trip through memory, grief and magic.

‘The heart of Old Owl And Matt is big and warm and generous, and filled with a smudged kind of purity that is always endearing, sometimes sublime. But nothing is just heart. The body of this novel is by turns terrifying, sensual, ecstatic, disturbing, and its mystery unravels and re-ravels. It clouds and clears like the surface of a lake. The story telling is entirely engaging, and it is one of those books that feels like a companion, a friend, a presence.’ – Keith Ridgway, author of Dooneen, and A Shock

‘Robyn Skyrme’s debut novel reflects a talent long on display in his poetry: an electrifying precision with emotion, place and meaning, and the desire to wield it in powerful, discomforting ways. As a book that’s both queer and ghostly, Old Owl and Matt prioritises complexity over comfort, and through his compelling storytelling Skyrme lets us sit with pain and loss in all its shapes, offering us almost euphoric glimpses of hope and joy within the cold landscape of grief.’ – Huw Lemmey, author of Unknown Language 

Robyn Skyrme lived in Brighton for ten years. His ‘queer pillow book’ Candles and Water was a Book of the Year for 2024 in Granta magazine and The Times Literary Supplement. His writing was in the second volume of Penguin Modern Poets (Penguin, 2016), and he has published numerous small-press poetry pamphlets, most recently In That Hoarding, That Drinking In The Sun (Fathomsun Press, 2026). Old Owl and Matt is his first novel.