i will pay to make it bigger is a novella, by poet and artist Ahren Warner, in which ‘you’ are the main character. Through text and image – autofiction, docufiction, and just plain fiction – you work your way through a tangle of preoccupations: from what it means to buy enjoyment, to the fragile construction of your own self as a cultural product.

'Ahren Warner has become an influential poet, with his trademark tabulations and his unlikely mix of youthful humour and academic nous. Confer confers upon him the status of a central figure in a new generation of British poets.’ **– Roddy Lumsden **‘The brilliant writer and artist Ahren Warner makes a welcome return with this verse sequence with photographs… This story of an affair is a messy, disturbing triumph in the traditions of Arthur Rimbaud and John Berryman: how Le bateau ivre or The Dream Songs would read if they’d been written today. It too could be the anthem of a generation.’ – Fiona Sampson, The Guardian‘Ahren Warner has a claim to be the “poet’s poet” of his generation. Even in apparently domestic and personal guise, he’s a writer whose work conveys voluptuous but intelligent delight in language and technique.’ – Carol Rumens, The Guardian‘The experience of Ahren Warner’s new book is part invitation and part secrecy. As I read it I felt I had wandered from a party and stumbled into something vulnerable, something human and real beyond the clinking of glasses and fake laughter. That I had gotten the chance to hide in a closet and listen to a conversation I needed to hear but couldn’t quite access on my own. There is a conversation between the text and the film, a conversation between the speaker and the other, and most importantly – a conversation between Mr. Warner and himself. What a strange joy to be invited in.’ – Matthew Dickman