What is it like, as a daily, lived experience, to feel like a fraud or a fake? And what can ‘the imposter phenomenon’ – a sense that our true abilities and achievements, and other core aspects of our identities, are unreal, undeserved or mistakenly bestowed – tell us about who we are and how we relate to one another?

Through lively and vivid poetic monologues drawn from original interview material, and through original poetry, Pretenders begins to consider individual feelings and experiences of fraudulence, pretence and persona in a wider social and historical context.

'As a study of imposter feelings, Pretenders is revelatory: humane in its ability to hold and make space for vulnerability, and alert to the socio-political dynamics that underpin the impulse to self-doubt. Whatever mode she’s working in, Potts is an essential poet.' – Sarah Howe 

'Where did that voice come from, asks one of the voices here, that was telling me I wasn’t doing anything right?  This is one of the serious questions Pretenders investigates, together with the ways in which our sense of self is pressure-formed by the roles we perform and are expected to perform. If you’ve ever had the feeling that you’re not good enough, you should read this book.  If you’ve never had that feeling, then you must read this book.'
– Abigail Parry

Pretenders is published by Bloodaxe Books in March 2025.