Free Verse The Poetry Book Fair
Publisher Guide & Anthology 2014
2014 Typeset in Palatino Printed by Short Run Press Cover art & design by Tom Humberstone www.tomhumberstone.com Free, as part of Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair on 6th September 2014, with thanks to Arts Council England for funding which made it possible. This digital edition published online at www.poetrybookfair.com via Issuu. www.poetrybookfair.com Acknowledgments All works are published here by permission of the respective poets and publishers, who retain the copyright. No works may be reproduced without their written permission. p.46 ‘And then there will be no more nonsense’ Copyright © Lorraine Mariner 2014, from There Will Be No More Nonsense; p.25 ‘Annulment’ Copyright © Toby Martinez de la Rivas 2014, from Terror
Welcome We hope you enjoyed this year’s Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair, which had more exhibitors (sixty-one of them) and more readings (twenty-nine of them) than ever before. We also had discussions, a busy Evening Do, and a Poetry School poet building a poem on site using visitors’ contributions. We are immensely grateful to Arts Council England for funding us, enabling us to offer travel bursaries to publishers and bring them here from across the UK (and further afield). It also allowed for the creation of this anthology and guide, and lets us offer it to you for free. This anthology reflects the way we see the fair – a place where all poetry publishers are given the same space to show you what they’ve been up to. However, as you’ll see from the list of absent publishers on the penultimate page of this book, we are barely scratching the surface – there’s so much great stuff out there to be explored. Go! Read! Discover! And if you like what you see, please support the poets and publishers with a purchase.
Chrissy Williams, Director Joey Connolly, Manager
Publisher Information & Poems
Please note that Egg Box, Enitharmon and Agenda were all late additions to the Poetry Book Fair and, although they were not included in the original anthology, we have now been able to add their information for this digital edition.
The Myth of Bootsy Collins #2
13 Pages www.13pp.co.uk 13 Pages is a publisher of contemporary poetry. We have published 13 Pages, a boutique quality print-only magazine with an emphasis on craft, as well as The Mimic Octopus, an anthology of poetic imitations. Poets we have published include John Burnside, Ian Duhig, Karen Solie, Helen Mort and Andrew Motion. Our latest projects are a series of modern broadsides and a pamphlet of “Funksonnets” by Tim Gunn.
He will not dance, Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, His world a swallowing of toothpaste. He will not dance, Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, His truth he looks for in a suitcase; An algorithmic vanity of face, A Melding of Selves in White and Blue, His skin an excising of any trace, His clothes worn his heartbeat to eschew, A ploughing for the coming of the plough, A coughing for the coming of the cough. Until he finds the funk his nose will grow, The nose the elongation of the empty proof: He will not dance, Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, He will not dance
Tim Gunn, from The Mimic Octopus (May 2014)
When I Was Straight Everything came to me vicariously—a promise, a post-script, a preview of coming attractions.
A Midsummer Night’s Press www.amidsummernightspress.com A Midsummer Night’s Press is an independent poetry press, which publishes under four imprints: Fabula Rasa (mythic poetry), Body Language (LGBT voices), Sapphic Classics (reprints of iconic lesbian feminist texts) & a new translation series. Our authors include Jane Yolen, Roz Kaveney, Achy Obejas, Francesca Lia Block, Rachel Pollack, Brane Mozetic, Julie R. Enszer, Charles Ardai, David Bergman, Julie Marie Wade, Michael Broder, Lawrence Schimel, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Cheryl Clarke, etc.
Desire a quiet rumor that rippled through the halls. At the cinema, someone always paid for popcorn, a soda with two straws, little licorice candies. I loved to sit in the back row & watch till all the credits rolled. “You have a gift,” the blond boy said, “for stalling.” Later, in a twin bed in a college dorm, I spoke without thinking— “I like you. Let’s get this over with.” His pink mouth amazed, so wide & round. “Did you hear what you just said?” he asked. I hadn’t been listening.
Julie Marie Wade, from When I Was Straight
The Shadow of the Wind
Acumen Publications
www.acumen-poetry.co.uk Acumen Publications grew out of the small press Ember Press. Its first venture in 1985 was the founding of Acumen Literary Journal: a magazine devoted to poetry, articles relevant to poetry, and reviews of poetry books. Additionally, it has published an on-going series of poetry pamphlets, interspersed with the publications of full collections of poetry. The press organises regular poetry events throughout the year culminating in the Torbay Poetry Festival, now in its fourteenth year.
Even the winds of June will search you out Even those faults that are normal shall show Like the sorrows and illnesses each of us would flee. But there is another wind than winds of the world It is the wind of shadows that you may feel – A wind that blows beautiful and silent The wind of stars that fill the emptiest space. It is the last wind of all, wind of shadows And no direction – in the first few hours of life It wraps like an invisible shawl each baby – Yes, the last wind, and the first, like hope And you know, of course, it is the wind of love.
William Oxley, from ISCA – Exeter Moments
The Newport Ship
Agenda Poetry www.agendapoetry.co.uk Agenda is one of the best known and most highly respected poetry journals in the world. Founded in 1959 by Ezra Pound and William Cookson, it is edited by Patricia McCarthy, William Cookson’s co-editor from 1998 until his death in 2003. All issues have general material, some have a theme, perhaps a particular country or poet. Volumes of an individual poet’s work come out as Agenda Editions. Online broadsheets feature young poets and artists, and online web supplements feature poems and paintings – both are archived by The Bodleian. Workshops are held in the Sussex countryside.
Tatters of torn sails are gulls drifting above the long brown muscles of the Usk where the great ship slept five hundred years, a husk embalmed in oils of alluvial mud and grit. Hands that launch her now into the light of day from the restless wrestling waters of Usk and Severn, from the silt, the salt, the silence where she lay, are tender as those who lift a broken man. Now, just to see her, to imagine, is to hear the clatter as men lapped planks to build the hull, rang home the nails; and sailors drawn by the sea’s pull who crossed the unmapped wilderness of fear, to beach on this shore. Ship without name abandoned to the heave of tides, the scour of rain and wind, she gives up her bones again like a queen unbound from her winding-sheet, robed in sunlight, crowned.
Gillian Clarke, from Agenda 46/4
Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers www.abar.net
Northern Coast, Cliffs But it was not Paradise, niñito, but only the bone-dry desert where millions of years ago was the Pacific and in front some phrases of love, of madness and of death, written on the cliffs crossing the broken afternoon, the broken night, your flayed dawn
Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers, and imprint Allardyce Book, were founded in the 1980s. Books include the first collected editions of work by Anthony Barnett, Andrew Crozier, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Douglas Oliver, J. H. Prynne, and translations of Akutagawa, Albiach, Des Forêts, Lagerkvist, Vallejo, Vesaas, Zanzotto. Other books include comprehensive bio-discographies of African American violinists Stuff Smith and Eddie South (the Dostoevsky and Tolstoy of jazz violinists) and Listening for Henry Crowder: A Monograph on His Almost Lost Music, the African American pianist and consort of Nancy Cunard (with CD). Snow is a literary and arts review published since 2013.
Raúl Zurita, trans. Boyd Nielsen, from Snow, 2
Scenes from The Passion: The Fourth of November
Ambit
www.ambitmagazine.co.uk Founded in 1959 by Dr Martin Bax, Ambit has a reputation for seeking out emerging talent. Over the years it has published Satyendra Srivastava, Sonia Besford and Nazand Begikhani to name just a few. Ambit also produces a quarterly magazine which is now edited by Briony Bax.
On the fourth of November, my body was waiting like the sticks and crates that, for weeks, had been piling high and then higher impossibly high in the field behind the recreation ground. Each day I’d pass by, dawdling home from choir or Guides and watch it building: silver birch in the arms of Suzanne, branches and chair legs donnied by lads, the squitch my sister flung in fistfuls dazzly as her hair, every stem of kindling carried by someone who loved me stacked it higher, until I lay awake in the urchin hour, my heart an alder seed splitting, my bones readying to tinder; in my dark insides leaves coppered, trembling in the black. I was waiting waiting for the match to be struck.
Liz Berry, from Ambit 213
Lip Service, or, La Haine Kiss you, take your children. Riotous though it is, this shit’s not for kids. La Haine is bloating through drive-in speakers, serenading ‘68 miasma, she and Humbert staring down the barrel of the same animal gun, wincing.
Annexe
www.annexemagazine.com Born in the middle of 2011, Annexe has grown from a simple online magazine to a dynamic producer of live literature and innovative printed work. From the award-winning Introducing series to experimental collections such as Volumes of Text, Annexe strives to create work that challenges and cultivates contemporary language.
I will cross you if you come over all drunk-like, tarantella con dolcezza with your latest organ grinder. Find Slovenia with your head full of black, black wine – dim donkey piñata – an industry of collagen in scapegoat giallo. How can I follow the winters, archangel of interns; doubting Thomas and his motives. Intimate metastasis intrigues the censor, his biting wounds inwardly glow and Venus infers her worth from a table. Her onus, her offending isotopes, eyes big as gum balls, swings rapidly, a timeshare in blazing saddles and neat little ellipticals. I hope, I know as you do, we’ll settle kindly out of court; –you form –isms like Christmas – sweet Mary shares her sweat with an ostler, a meek swearing cross to milk.
Charlotte Newman, from Selected Poems
Hunger In my prison I dream the apple
Arc Publications www.arcpublications.co.uk
Arc Publications, based in West Yorkshire, specialises in the publication of poetry in translation. For 45 years it has published over 300 poets from 40 countries in over 30 languages, often making their work available to English-speaking audiences for the first time. Arc’s translated poetry list, run alongside a list of UK and world poets writing in English, is at the core of the organisation’s mission to publish excellent writers from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures.
Lord grant me my sins (Out of your rib Eden Adam out of mine) Blindly peering through the peep-hole Secretively I plant the word in this cell exhorting the apple to grow Out of the angel’s limited line of vision the tree tall as a dream Apple-green cherry-red deadly tree of bitter nightshade
Rose Ausländer, trans. Anthony Vivis and Jean Boase-Beier, from While I Am Drawing Breath
from Baba And there is no truth effect. Just the a of. Just to drop the rock. So no one’s ever kneading. Which is as smiley as. Any old echo is.
Blart
www.blartmagazine.jimdo.com Blart Books was founded in 2013 by Lucy Harvest Clarke and Stephen Emmerson. Based in London we are committed to publishing non-academic alternative poetry.
Remembrance. As human as. God is.
Lucy Harvest Clarke, from Baba
A century later The school-bell is a call to battle, every step to class, a step into the firing-line. Here is the target, fine skin at the temple, cheek still rounded from being fifteen.
Bloodaxe Books www.bloodaxebooks.com
Bloodaxe Books is one of Britain’s leading poetry publishers. Internationally renowned for quality in literature and excellence in book design, our authors and books have won virtually every major literary award given to poetry, from the T.S. Eliot Prize and Pulitzer to the Nobel Prize. The Bloodaxe list includes new and established authors from Britain, Ireland and overseas, poetry in translation, and anthologies like the Staying Alive trilogy which have opened up contemporary poetry to many thousands of new readers.
Surrendered, surrounded, she takes the bullet in the head and walks on. The missile cuts a pathway in her mind, to an orchard in full bloom, a field humming under the sun, its lap open and full of poppies. This girl has won the right to be ordinary, wear bangles to a wedding, paint her fingernails, go to school. Bullet, she says, you are stupid. You have failed. You cannot kill a book or the buzzing in it. A murmur, a swarm. Behind her, one by one, the schoolgirls are standing up to take their places on the front line.
Imtiaz Dharker, from Over the Moon
I’ve razed a field of rye Sheafs of wheat I’ve strangled I’ve made some maize to die Heads of barley I have mangled I’ve spelled the end for spelt My job title is ‘miller’ – But in my heart I’ve always felt I am a cereal killer
Burning Eye Books www.burningeyebooks.wordpress.com NEVER KNOWINGLY MAINSTREAM We publish Performance and Spoken Word Poetry, Indie Fiction and Lies. We published our first book in May 2012 and now have 30+ titles in print. We aim to publish the best, funniest, most accessible and entertaining poetry in the world and break the rules of publishing.
Mab Jones, from Poor Queen
Mouse skeleton So quietly, decorously in the tide of dust, the moment of grace untied what you so nervously
Candlestick Press www.candlestickpress.co.uk
Candlestick Press is a small, independent poetry pamphlet press set up in 2008 and based in Nottingham. We believe that poetry pamphlets are an ideal way to introduce poetry to readers (they can follow up their curiosity in a full collection elsewhere) and our aim is to encourage people to include poetry in their everyday lives. We encourage people to give our pamphlets to each other instead of a greetings card.
embodied. Unbodied solo under festoons of webs, among stoor and heads of wasps, and their burst bike’s halo. You left just your inner shell, a rack of suggestion, delicate pedestal on which to set this world running pell-mell.
Jason Watts, From Ten Poems from Scotland
Home Birth
Carcanet
www.carcanet.co.uk Carcanet Press is one of the outstanding independent literary publishers of our time. Now in its fifth decade, Carcanet publishes the most comprehensive and diverse list available of modern and classic poetry in English and in translation, as well as a range of inventive fiction, biography and literary criticism. For four decades PN Review has been a place to discover new poems in English and in translation as well as interviews, news, essays and reviews from around the world.
The night your sister was born in the living-room you lay on your bed, upstairs, unwaking, Cryptosporidium frothing and flourishing through the ransacked terraces of your small intestine so that, come morning, you, your bedding, me, the midwife even, had to be stripped and washed. Your father lifted you up like a torch and carried you off to the hospital. You came back days later, pale and feverish, and visited us in the bedroom in your father’s arms. You turned your head to take her in: this black-haired, tiny, yellow person who’d happened while you slept. And you were the white dot of the television, vanishing— vanishing—just before the screen goes dark.
Sinéad Morrissey, from Parallax
A Quiet Night In The clearly documented correlation which exists between the widespread fear of the Bomb and increased female libido need only detain us here in so far as it relates to Amy who would as a girl – and on into her thirties – have liked nothing better than a quiet night in with How to Win your Man and Keep Him
CB editions www.cbeditions.com
Founded in 2007 and based in London, CB editions is a one-person operation with around 35 books in print, both poetry and prose. Titles published by CBe have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize three times, the McKitterick Prize (for best first novel by a writer over 40) and the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize.
but for whom on the eve of her fortieth birthday so little hope remains that if it weren’t for masturbation then we, like Sabrina, looking in through the window could hardly claim to be surprised to see so tall and thin a woman sitting by the fire in a rocking chair reading, alone with not only her own thoughts but those of Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War.
Andrew Elliott, from Mortality Rate
Walking with Darwin
Cultured Llama www.culturedllama.co.uk
Cultured Llama Publishing was established in 2011 by husband and wife team, veteran publisher Bob Carling and poet and short story writer Maria C. McCarthy. Based in Kent, the press now boasts a stable of talented writers, publishing poetry, short fiction and cultural non-fiction. Cultured Llama aspires to quality from the first creative thought through to the finished product.
It was on the second round, only three pebbles left on the bend, that I began to feel lighter, placing my feet where he once paced, until I could guess when it’s you about to overturn the world, you would need something like this, the sound of laughter, how even as your children played, you kept on the path you started, the end and the beginning in one sand circle; what’s one more round when not even love can disrupt the plan?
Sarah Salway, from Digging Up Paradise: Potatoes, People and Poetry in the Garden of England
Lord of the Fishes
Egg Box
www.eggboxpublishing.com True to its name, Egg Box is predominantly a publisher and promoter of newcomers and is interested in talented writing with an experimental or intelligent edge – fresh eggs. As well as exciting collections from the likes of Agnes Lehoczky, Daniel Kane and Vahni Capildeo, it also publishes pamphlets through its F.U.N.E.X. series, so far featuring Sam Riviere, Matthew Welton and Tom Warner. Each year, Egg Box also publishes the Creative Writing anthologies for the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s leading creative writing schools.
Having never been to yoga classes I’m not familiar with the sense of complete completeness on my in breath, on my out breath, while I hold the Mountain pose, Lord of the Fishes or any other figure I might imagine. No, here I am instead in the knots of my own still-life: Person, writing.
Tom Warner, from Yoga
Your Smile
Emma Press
www.theemmapress.com The Emma Press is an independent publisher dedicated to producing books which are sweet, funny and beautiful. It was founded in Winnersh in 2012 by Emma Wright, who edits all the books with Rachel Piercey. The Emma Press’s publishing programme features a mixture of themed poetry anthologies and single-author pamphlets, with an ongoing engagement with the works of the Roman poet Ovid. Recent themes for anthologies have included motherhood, homesickness and dance.
It arrests me today, happiness spun in skin – landscape sculpted from life’s lightest discursiveness and a scene that I, breath-batedly, wait to scan. I’m a fool for your tongue, neck for your laughter’s noose, and I’d sing, if I could, tributes in Ancient Norse. Love, I think you’re the grain ground in my labours’ mill. I could wither and wilt, waiting for you to smile. It’s the law of my eye always to seek out charm and I’d follow your smile far as my feet can run. I could live on your lips, calling their corners home, and enshrine all the words, slowly in rhyme and rune, that you spill like the split-seconding sound of rain. It’s a marvel to me world has a you within, where the ripples you make meet me at every turn. When that time is at hand, time to relinquish life, I’ll remember your smile breaking and burning on and I’ll twirl into death carelessly like a leaf that has spread in the fresh force of the Tuscan sun. Yes, you’re all of the thrill, none of the fall, of sin and the heat that I feel, looking you eye-to-lip, is the proof of two selves starting to overlap.
Andrew Wynn Owen, from Raspberries for the Ferry
Ancient Sunlight
Enitharmon Press www.enitharmon.co.uk
Founded in 1967 by the bibliophile and collector Alan Clodd, Enitharmon Press specialises in poetry but also publishes literary criticism, memoirs and translations. It soon established a reputation for high production quality, painstaking editorial standards and the resurrection of neglected texts from particularly prolific literary periods. The name of the press derives from William Blake’s Enitharmon, a muse of poetry and painting and representation of spiritual beauty. Enitharmon Editions was founded in 2001, dedicated to developing collaborations between writers and artists as well as standalone art books.
And when I stand here meditating with Theo in my arms, this fifteen months old guy who looks at me & charms the bird-words out of my branching mouth : We look and see blue sky or stars or rucksacked men or corporation carts, gangs of girls or coloured cars, but say to each other ‘look there’s fox going home’. Then we walk, me holding him, he holding me and making new geometries we venture out to see how the star-sparkled world is doing in its absence. We talk and hang on tight in this world where words prevail and silence is looked askance and meditation’s thought to be some poor alternative to an assault rifle. We all walk alone, thin as breath or hair, flake or bone we all walk to the seething stations or finish beneath mountains that hold snows through heat-raw summer. But I want to say poetry is a vital art, pumping bright blood through our heart, poetry is laughter, poetry is breath. Poetry’s a translation out of silence and, for sure, translation’s the opposite of making war.
Stephen Watts, from Meditation at the Window
Data
Etruscan Books www.e-truscan.co.uk
Etruscan Books is 17 years young, and has published concrete, Gaelic and modernist poetry with an ear for the lyric and the made up word, giving attention to spatiality, experiment and the lyric. Their work represents a continuum of the way of bookmaking by presses like Fulcrum, Goliard, Black Sparrow and Grosseteste. The most recent publications have been retrospectives by John Hall and Nicholas Johnson, a visual book by Carlyle Reedy, essays by Tom Leonard, the seminal Advent by Brian Coffey, and accompanying Selected Poems.
teevee bloodywell need a laser beam to make that hologram don’t need no laser to see no holographic teevee actor someone emptying baked beans right onto yr livingroom carpet stupid text shattered plate each fragment having memory, the object photographed, metaphysic in quotes “we are such stuff as dreams are made.” royal hologram exhibit Ingres portrait first teevee programme people-controller an invention of low mental-ability reducing to a joke all hope of future. it’s depressing more-or-less a production inferior in every way, no visual no sound experiment. hendrix was better. nor interest in costume. again jimi overall it’s a wonder how to make a shelter. to live with ghost patterns. to find a corner somewhere to: note down all most fascinating . . .
Carlyle Reedy, from EPOS
Nape What an utter angle-poise lamp of a neck you have, you disconcertingly accurate thrower of light on to the busted hunch of my bedroom furniture.
Eyewear Publishing www.eyewearpublishing.com Eyewear is an independent londonbased press mainly focused on poetry and poetry criticism. Founded in 2012, we have now published 25 books – some have appeared in the Forward anthology, been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas prize, or selected as an Observer book of the year. Through our annual Melita Hume poetry prize we celebrate excellent young poets. We publish poetry in translation (Tedi Lopez Mills), as well as poetry in English from around the world.
You have cast the ties looped on the back of my chair as a festival plant, a waterfall of wax tongues drooping from a branch above the city square. Lit my jacket as two folded ravens that have set their feathers and settled for the night at the foot of the bed. In the illuminated shrag of the floorboard I am made beachcomber, botanist, someone concerned with forestry. I am struck, collecting twigs and etching a comedian’s circle around our feet. I press a splintered finger against the button-hole of a bird’s chest, and edge myself quietly towards the light.
Keiran Goddard, from For The Chorus
Annulment What might or may the sely larke say
Faber & Faber www.faber.co.uk
Faber & Faber remains one of the last of the great independent publishing houses. Established as a firm in 1929, and publishing many of the greats of the twentieth century, including Robert Lowell, Louis MacNeice, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Graham, Marianne Moore, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney, Faber is committed to its strong frontlist alongside the depth of its backlist, and to remaining at the heart of poetry publishing.
I feared the water: the shadows and spawn resurrecting in dark light, the glory-stare through low broken cloud. Genuflecting among the basal leaves of withering harebells, I saw and see the barred and agile God ravenous in hĂs snowdrift of feathers tearing at the plucked anus, prolific eye engulfing the days, the years turned briefly to a psalmody of rotor blades behind the sheltering hill. And something else: the prodigious bellowing of cows in the yard planting their bulks and straining after their penned weans: that still reaches me from a way aways.
Toby Martinez de las Rivas, from Terror
I
Five Leaves Publishing www.fiveleaves.co.uk Five Leaves has been publishing poetry, and a whole lot more, since 1996. Our first was by Michael Rosen, our next is a A Modern Don Juan: cantos for these times by Divers Hands, a large format 420 page book of 100 cantos each by fourteen writers including George Szirtes, W.N. Herbert, Sinead Morrissey, Amit Majmuder and others. In November we opened an indie/radical bookshop in Nottingham with a large poetry section and a regular reading programme.
Lord Byron! You’re a poet, so to speak; Unrepresentative of all the race By virtue of your wit, the sheer technique With which you cocked two fingers at disgrace; If only poets now had half your cheek, Perhaps the world would be a better place; Instead of which (we know you will not thank us For telling you) it’s run by merchant bankers. II To dedicate these Cantos to a toff Is hard for us, therefore, who must endure The sight of well-fed porkers in the trough And public school-boys stealing from the Poor Their Benefits. The rich can all fuck off And die as far as we’re concerned. Since you’re Already dead, this lets you off the hook; So here it is in verse: a votive book.
Andy Croft, from Dedication
Auction
Flarestack Poets www.flarestackpoets.co.uk Flarestack Poets is a Birmingham based press specialising in poetry pamphlets. Set up in 2008 by Jacqui Rowe and Meredith Andrea, the press has an outstanding list that includes established poets together with exciting new voices. Flarestack Poets have twice won the Michael Marks Award for single pamphlets; and in addition, won the Publishers’ Award in 2013. The press regards the poetry pamphlet as a form in its own right; a vision reflected in the distinctive design and thoughtful layout of Flarestack Poets pamphlets.
I have a green meteor next to my name: nobody has ever complained about me. Ten more perfect transactions and it will be a golden meteor. I find an old watch. It is ugly and bright blue; the ticking hand is Bart Simpson’s arm. It sells quickly for £2.99. I receive a message the same day: thank you iam realy lukin 4ward 2 gettin my new Bart Simpson watch I slip it into an envelope place it lovingly on the kitchen table and smash it three times with a hammer. It hits the bottom of the postbox with the hushed jangle of settling stardust.
Michael Conley, from Aquarium
Splitfish We are lying on the ocean bed, one sea-mile down. Our eyes ring with salt, full moons of breath sing up.
Gatehouse Press www.gatehousepress.com
Gatehouse Press is an East Anglian small press founded in 2007 by Tom Corbett, publishing poetry from both new and established writers. It also publishes Lighthouse, a journal of essays, short fiction and poetry from emerging writers, described by Nicholas Royle as “the development of the year in short fiction”. Gatehouse is actively involved in its local community, organising regular events and launches; the press is run on a voluntary basis by its editors, all its profits go towards new publishing projects.
His circling boat darkens the sand to trace our outline, until he slings hooks that catch her hands and tongue. He draws her up into the boat’s wide sides finds the bite of the blade in her pelvis, grunting as he guts her. One sea-mile down, I cannot be pulled up, even as he drops her overboard, even as the water takes our weight.
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, from Splitfish
Living Next Door to the Sea is like living next to a man with an unpredictable temper and a pit bull.
Grey Hen Press www.greyhenpress.com Grey Hen Press was set up to showcase the work of older women. Today’s poetry publishing scene is highly competitive and in building up a CV women over 50, who may have only recently started writing, are pushed for time – it’s hard to get that first collection. We aim to publish well known poets alongside those who should be better known and we believe that excellent poetry collected in themed anthologies attracts a wide range of readers.
You smile when you see it, say good morning sea, squinting sideways for signs of mood change, a darkening, an unusual quiet, the absence of birds. Some days it’s ok to walk the beach, gathering stones, or even dip the toes. The sea lies flat in the sun, growling in its sleep. Other times you’re grateful for the garden fence, the space between. Then you wonder if the fence would make the slightest difference, if push came to shove; or the space between mean anything at all, under a full moon, with a spring tide, when a tremor far away shakes the earth and sends that wet fist towards your little certainties.
Ann Alexander, from Running Before The Wind
Nights Out Sometimes, when she and I find ourselves seated just inside the door of the hotel bar, two or three young women will come prancing in,
HappenStance www.happenstancepress.com HappenStance is based in Scotland, a small independent press specialising in debut poetry pamphlets, with occasional book-length collections. The press was established in 2005. It is managed and run by Helena Nelson, without public funding, but with the help of a supportive subscriber list.
all innocence, high-booted glamour, and dark-eyed casting about, and she must wonder out of the corner of her eye if I may not be taking in too much. If she only knew what a heavenly and carnal peace I feel as my thoughts withdraw from the bare, emblazoned backs and sweep down towards her dear pale hands at rest in her lap, one cupped inside the other, palm resting open.
Tom Duddy, from The Years
from The Big Story of the Lion i
Hearing Eye www.hearingeye.org Hearing Eye was established by John Rety and Susan Johns in 1987 with the publication of John Heath-Stubbs’ Cats’ Parnassus. Since then we have published over 200 books and pamphlets, from haiku to epic poems, by new and established poets. We are based at Torriano Meeting House in London which hosts weekly readings with a wide range of readers, including Dannie Abse, Les Murray and Mimi Khalvati. Many Hearing Eye authors are poets who have read at the Meeting House.
The Paladin
A lion had clamped its jaws around a child, And carried it, unharmed, into the wild Forest, where streams and birds’-nests are at home. He’d seized it as one plucks a summer bloom, Not really knowing why, nor even torn The skin, through tender-heartedness or scorn; Contempt, or loving-kindness, or defiance. They’re serious beasts, and generous, are lions. The little prince was in a wretched plight: Raw meat and grass his diet, weak with fright, He cowered in the cave, half-perishing. He was the offspring of the local king: The boy was ten years old, with sweet bright eyes. The king had just the one child otherwise, A little baby girl of two; and since He was quite old, his thoughts were with the prince, The monster’s prey. The country-folk were awed: A lion more fearsome than their own liege lord! A hero wandered in. They told the brave Man what was up; he headed for the cave.
Victor Hugo, trans. Timothy Adès, from The Big Story of the Lion
Henningham Family Press
Parados / Paradise
www.henninghamfamilypress.co.uk
David and Ping formed the Henningham Family Press in 2006 to make art together. They write essays and poetry that are reworked through fine art printmaking, bookbinding and performance. Collections that have acquired their work include: Victoria & Albert Museum, the Tate, Saison Poetry Library, UCL and UCLA. They have exhibited/performed at Christie’s Auction House, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the British Library, BBC Radio Theatre (The Verb) and around the world.
David Henningham, from An Unknown Soldier
Memorial
Hercules Editions www.herculeseditions.wordpress.com Hercules Editions was founded in 2011 by Tamar Yoseloff and Vici MacDonald to publish limited-edition chapbooks that bring together poetry and the visual arts. Our first publication, Formerly, was shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Our latest book is Heart Archives by Sue Rose, a family memento in sonnets and photographs. In 2014 we will be publishing Ormonde by Hannah Lowe and Shadow Players by Claire Crowther.
I will not care about the firing, the mastery of materials, when I’m grit and grilled bone, a snow of particles in a ceramic body, each pot perched like a squat bird on the rungs of a white ladder, a spreading estate. Mourning is the stuff of their making— they were born to hold death. The vessel for my remains will be those who carry part of me in their histories. They will scatter the ash of my absence over their hearts as the world dies and hear me ticking in their veins. They will be my memorial.
Sue Rose, from Heart Archives
M
Holland Park Press www.hollandparkpress.co.uk Holland Park Press is a privately owned publisher of literary fiction and poetry. The company specializes in contemporary English fiction & poetry, translations of Dutch classics and publishes modern Dutch fiction & poetry in English and Dutch. We accept poetry submissions throughout the year and are especially keen on collections based around a strong central theme, which ideally tell a story. Instructions about how to submit a manuscript can be found on our website.
Five, six – and righteous, the child in green in Gaza stands in her wrecked home, grubby, indignant. Her hands point; she explains what was done bombed, burned. It all smells like gas! We had to throw our clothes away! The earrings my father gave me… No martyr, resistant. The burnt cradle…
Marilyn Hacker, from Diaspo/Renga
from Berlin Notebooks Straight track. Distant jogger. Silent cyclist. Gentle breeze. Black dog. Pink tongue. Suspicious woman. Blue jeans. Noisy cyclists. Monotonous trees. Calling birds. Tired steps. Monotony of the walk. Monotony of the border guard.
if p then q
Straight track. Regular football. Hovering bee. Monotonous breeze.
www.ifpthenq.co.uk if p then q is a publisher of experimental poetry based in Manchester. The press has been running since 2008 and has published a host of authors of international repute including P. Inman, Geof Huth, Tim Atkins, Philip Terry and Tom Jenks. Chrissy Williams and Holly Pester’s collections have both been featured on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. The titles we publish often use styles which could be called conceptual or minimal and are reguarly hilarious. Fun is the word.
Philip Terry, from Advanced Immorality
Snowstorm
Isobar Press www.isobarpress.com Isobar Press, founded in 2013 and based in London and Tokyo, publishes English-language writing from Japan; rather than having any specific stylistic agenda, the press aims to represent the variety and the excellence of the work being done there. Although the first eight books are all by nativespeakers of English who are, or who have been, resident in Japan, the press will in future also publish Englishlanguage work by Japanese writers, and translations of modern Japanese poetry.
All night the insomniac has watched it falling evenly on the uneven earth – a redundancy of snow unmapping the ground, straightjacketing the quiescent trees. The world, stashed in a magician’s vast sleeve, awaits the call of encore from its starry audience. In a hazy pantomime of roofs and mailboxes, snowing knit/purls to not snowing like wakefulness to sleep: a slow raveling or a sudden unhinging, the insomniac doesn’t know. He has failed to observe, again, how to truss the self to the concussing of air, how to receive the sacrament of sleep which, like snow, falls in a mantle of colorless symmetric absolution. The snow-saddled fence and his wife under the coverlet are sine waves equally swaddled in the nameless sameness once banished to the runes of molecules. Finally the self can stop talking to itself.
Jessica Goodfellow, from The Insomniac’s Weather Report
Knives Forks and Spoons Press www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk Knives Forks and Spoons Press is an independent publishing house based in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, United Kingdom. It was established by Alec Newman in April 2010. Specialising in avant-garde and experimental poetry, the press publishes full collections, pamphlets and anthologies. A typical year’s output is 24 titles, by new poets and artists, as well as many already internationally recognised writers. KFS prides itself on being a forum for an extraordinary range of diversity and risk-taking artistic experiment.
The hard hat in the hard hour. We dissembled. The truth we served up was thus and thus. We ate our hats and still we were hungry.
Kevin Reid & George Szirtes, from Wordless
from Chapters of Age A line between shadow and light Full of bone and flint Full of flint and bone. Lines across the earth, head Looks at foot, foot steps across Gaps in stone where gentians grow.
Leafe Press www.leafepress.com Leafe Press was launched at a reading in Nottingham in April 2000, and has published a wide range of poetry. We publish pamphlets and full-sized books. Our poets include Geraldine Monk, Peter Riley, Abdellatif Laâbi, and numerous others. Our pamphlet series, Open House Editions, focuses on innovative contemporary poets.
God I used to have such a pure foot You couldn’t see a single vein on it. How our forms rush to the gate. How matter obstructs us And yet forms The delicate street at night And the endless stone deserts At which the heart grows weary And the mind smoulders.
Peter Riley, from Chapters of Age
Bear The quiet civility of chess absorbs Sofia’s central park, the players wordlessly absorbed. Light early summer air: new flowers, girls in groups flirt with the nervous boys. The noise of an accordion: a glum and ragged bear, led forward on a chain.
Melos Press www.melospress.blogspot.com Melos Press is a recently formed small press dedicated to producing pamphlets of poetry (up to 32 pages long) and the occasional full length collection. We are based in South-West London. At present all work is commissioned, although we are keen to look at high-quality submissions by poets with some track record of publication in magazines. Our next publication will be a collection from Cathy Galvin.
His master orders coffee, yawns, and yanks the chain; business is bad – the world and its compassion! Someone must suffer: let it be the bear. Who at the next pull staggers up and claps his dirty paws.
Nicholas Murray, from Of Earth, Water, Air and Fire
Lactoexodus For a time, my body made milk, and I wrote no poems. For a time, I made milk, and my body wrote no poems.
MIEL www.miel.ohbara.com/wordpress MIEL was established in 2011 to promote and publish difficult, innovative, intelligent, and deeply felt writing and visual art, with a particular but non-exclusive focus on work by women. We publish poetry, short prose, photographs, and prints in forms that bridge the trade edition and artist’s book. We are invested in books as objects and are interested in contributing to a tactile reading experience, whether paper or electronic.
My body said milk. Now there is something that wants words. Some self or some body that wants them. This wanting has a place. It is called Temple, Maine.
Kristen Case, from Temple
New Departures www.poetryolympics.com New Departures publications were founded in 1959 by Michael Horovitz in his last student year at Oxford, dedicated to experimental work in all the arts. The first issue featured Beckett, Burroughs, Schwitters, Stevie Smith et al, and ND #2/3 John Cage, Corso, Creeley, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ionesco et al. As soon as ND #1 appeared, Live New Departures kicked in, & jazz poetry, singer-songwriters, plays, dance & other intermedic activities developed. In June 1965 the LND troupes were instrumental in enabling the occupation of London’s Albert Hall by around 8,000 auditors in a marathon happening rooted in poetries from nine countries. Since then Poetry Olympics festivals have moved from strength to strength. Many anthologies + a couple of recordings are available, including The POT! (Poetry Olympics Twenty05) Anthology, ND #36-37, 2005.
A Ghost of Summer Where O where will wildness go Now the sunshine turns to snow The cold winds blow my spirits low The high winds call my spirit back To flow and run – and ebb, for lack Of clear direction. Alone I walk Through empty streets, I talk To no-one – none else abroad My pumping heart awaits the hoard Must needs reward me at the next hilltop But mounted to the crest I stop Aghast – no promised land in harvest there Instead a maze of prostrate trees, picked bare – Derelict dwellings – Where went the crop? A labyrinth of ruined fields that tear My hope out – Unidentified I am A last seed blown nowhere by the winty sky
Michael Horovitz, from The POM! (Poetry Olympics Marathon) Anthology, New Departures #32, 2001
The Professional
Nine Arches Press www.ninearchespress.com Nine Arches Press is run by editor Jane Commane and is based in the Midlands. Over six years, the press has published forty poetry books and pamphlets. In addition to this, Nine Arches is home to Under the Radar magazine (with co-editors Matt Merritt and Maria Taylor), and co-runs Leicester Shindig open mic. Our focus is on both new and established poets, and on bringing great contemporary poetry to a wider audience through events, readings and workshops.
You ask what I do for a living and I don’t think I can say. There is something in the way I take this teacup from you without the tell-tale click of ring on hot porcelain. You ask, Will this take long? Maybe. My questions must be answered. Some are pointless as wasps and the pain they give. Others will take you many lungs to satisfy the depth required. Remember my dolphin smile, my signature like snake-crossed sand. You will notice some day soon all your cups carry my trademark – a faint hairline crack. I specialise in subtle, half-bearable damage.
Richie McCaffery, from Cairn
S’io credesse per morte essere scarco after Petrarch’s Sonnet XXIX
if I believed that death could set me free from this unwinding universe of love I’d connect the exhaust to my snorkel & let the garage door crash down for good
Oystercatcher Press www.oystercatcherpress.com Oystercatcher Press is based on the Norfolk coast and has been publishing pamphlets of ambitious poetry since 2008. It won the inaugural Michael Marks Award for poetry publisher. The Oystercatcher enjoys interactive verbal installations and doesn’t much like cats.
but you’re never certain which dimension you’ll wake up in these days what with daily upgrades to the laws of physics & cars running on healthy chip-fat fuel you might just come to in intensive care exhausted & clinically obese wired up to NHS Word for Windows better to let the tug-of-war go on between Amor & the forces of Death guess who they’re using instead of a rope
Peter Hughes, from Regulation Cascade
Heathrow International immigration 2007 When she hear say dem haffi go back, Charlene start feel like dark night, She drop so much style pon she friend dem back a yard, now dem ago laugh afta her.
Peepal Tree Press www.peepaltreepress.com
Peepal Tree Press is home of the best in Caribbean and Black British fiction, poetry, literary criticism, memoirs and historical studies. We have published over 250 titles, and are committed to keeping them in print. Our list features new and established voices. Our Caribbean Modern Classics Series restores to print essential classic books from the 1950s and ’60s. We are also home to Inscribe, which supports writers of African & Asian descent in the Yorkshire region.
yet it never sink in, till she start see people beg and sob. It bruk her heart fi see the two pickney dem a hug up, ah look like poor ting inna di corna. Fi her stomach drop till it meet her big toe, mek her fall braps pon concrete floor and bawl. One smart dress ooman start hiss inna posh voice, Get up, get up, have you no shame. If she never feel so bad she woulda box her down. One pleat skirt granny, pull her up, tell her fe stop cry, tru God know’s best. How she did want to spit in God’s eye that day! Wha God know bout shame and sacrifice? Lord Gad, all di money spend pon Visa gone, dem nah even gi her back di flight money.
Malika Booker, from Pepper Seed
A mo ina \_/ jar
Penned in the Margins www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk Penned in the Margins creates publications and performances for people who are not afraid to take risks. We believe in the power of language to challenge how we think, test new ideas and explore alternative stories. We operate across the arts, collaborating with writers, artists and creative partners using new platforms and technologies. Since 2004 we have published over forty books of poetry, as well as a selection of experimental fiction, literary criticism and translation.
f I cUd capture a mo I’d av done it by now, I’d B hovering, an Austin pwrs kinda img, ina \_/ ful of mist. That’s w@ we cllD it – d tyms we weren’t blind bac frm d pub stumble he spoke as f he’d raped me n d tree’s branchs brushd agenst us 4 a mo. d 2 men s@ cYd by cYd n 1of em replayd d tyms we couldn’t DsciB, lyN bac on d grass n fallN N2 it, fallN deep so d oder mn z, m8 she’s yrz. Go gt her. Go gt her m8. &he did. Didn’t you? As f dat wz it, dat simpl. u thort, 1day n d fucha der wl B a \_/ jar on a countA ina rm dat l%ks lk u n l%ks lk M2 n dat jar wl contain ll deez moments, n d mist swirls arnd em, n we’ll sumhw B preserved.
Hannah Silva, from Forms of Protest
And then there will be no more nonsense And then there will be no more nonsense and you will tell her about that evening when you stopped in the dusk at the edge of the grass you had cut that afternoon and looked back to where you had just sat on the patio eating the meal she had cooked
Picador Poetry www.picador.com/poetry
and saw how blessed it all appeared if someone had watched from where you stood.
The Picador Poetry list began seventeen years ago with just one poet – and a determination to build a stable representing the very best in contemporary poetry. Under the editorship of the poet Don Paterson, Picador has established itself as one of the leading poetry imprints in the UK, and the roll-call of Picador authors includes many of the best-known names in British and American verse.
Lorraine Mariner, from There Will Be No More Nonsense
The Bomb in the Café War’s nearly done, and I’m due home. But now – brisk, handsome, young – he strides along that waterfront to burning lines of sea, mud-coloured sand.
Rack Press www.rackpress.blogspot.com Rack Press is a Welsh poetry pamphlet imprint founded in 2005 which has published more than thirty contemporary poets in attractive limited editions. In 2013 and 2012 it was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Publishers’ award and individual pamphlets have won the award and been selected as Poetry Book Society choices. Rack will be celebrating its 10th birthday in 2015.
From our new colony, I send my love, he writes, from a shaded table outside a quiet café. If all goes well, the future will... The bay is mercilessly hot. From Africa the sky is clear, but for two swallows who tilt together above the sea, so close they mate in air, tumble, and part, curving away to shine bright-bellied at the sun for centuries this afternoon.
William Palmer, from The Paradise Commissionaire
Dance Hymn
Reality Street www.realitystreet.co.uk Reality Street publishes original, innovative poetry and prose. Some significant titles have been: the anthology Out of Everywhere (ed. Maggie O’Sullivan); Selected Poems by Denise Riley; PLACE by Allen Fisher; The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (ed. Jeff Hilson); Tapestry by Philip Terry. Reality Street was founded in 1993 as an amalgamation of Reality Studios (London) and Street Editions (Cambridge). Since 2004 the press has been based in Hastings and run by Ken Edwards.
T on the sword look look Nam sicut somewhere at the eastern base. mors in Adam data est did these danceprints disappear kill-keen close your mouths are full of death Till the coming of the fire towers of pumice, caves of ash ‘we have built more such prisons’ grizzly, simple patterns, everywhere The mark of a T the claw of the law skippitting in the dust T on ash-pots.
Bill Griffiths, from Collected Poems & Sequences
Roncadora Press www.hughbryden.com Hugh Bryden formed Roncadora Press in 2005 to allow him to create artists’ books and pamphlets and to explore book ideas that balanced words and images. Roncadora aims to produce pamphlets combining poetry and images in hand-made objects that sit somewhere between the poetry pamphlet and the artist’s book. Roncadora Press pamphlets have won and been runner-up in the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award and have been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award in both Poetry and Publisher categories.
Encounter
Ap Bac, Vietnam the old woman squatting on the tip of a long thin canoe stacked from bow to stern with ducks in baskets bound for the market doesn’t break for a moment the gentle rhythm of the dipping of the paddle into the water of the canal even as with timeless ease she raises her life and laughs at my lens
Graham Fulton, from Photographing Ghosts
Midnight, Dhaka, 25 March 1971
Seren Books www.serenbooks.com
Seren (meaning ‘star’ in Welsh) Books has been publishing poetry for over 30 years. We began on the kitchen table of the then Poetry Wales Magazine editor, poetry enthusiast Cary Archard, soon grew into a small company working out of poet Dannie Abse’s garage, then moved some years ago to premises in Bridgend in South Wales. Under Mick Felton Managing Editor, the press has grown. Current Poetry Editor Amy Wack joined in 1989 and we’ve seen the publication of many prize-winning poetry titles over the years.
I am a hardened camera clicking at midnight. I have caught it all – the screeching tanks pounding the city under the massy heat, searchlights dicing the streets like bayonets. Kalashnikovs mowing down rickshaw pullers, vendor sellers, beggars on the pavements. I click on, despite the dry and bitter dust scratched on the lake-black water of my Nikon eye at a Bedford truck waiting by the roadside, at two soldiers holding the dead by their hands and legs, throwing them into the back, hurling them one upon another until the floor is loaded to the sky’s armpits. The corpses stare at our star’s succulent whiteness with their arms flung out as if to bridge a nation. Their bodies shake when the lorry chugs. I click as the soldiers laugh at the billboard on the bulkhead: GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU SIX MILLION DRUNK EVERY DAY.
Mir Mahfuz Ali, from Midnight, Dhaka
Locust and Marlin
Shearsman Books www.shearsman.com
Shearsman Books is a very active publisher of new poetry, mostly from Britain and the USA, but also with a busy translation list. Founded in 1981 as a magazine, with some occasional chapbooks, the press has grown rapidly in recent years, and is now one of the biggest poetry publishers in the UK. The press currently has over 500 titles in print. It has five main lists: British & Irish Poetry, North American Poetry, Poetry in Translation, Literary Criticism and Shearsman Classics.
In my father’s old bait and tackle shop giant fish dangle from hooks near the men grinning from ear to ear in the grainy, soiled photographs clipped from newspapers years ago before these same brave fishers were diagnosed one by one with disease or crippling forgetfulness or pains brought on by the drag of time’s bright lure. Inaudible prophets—dust minnows swim in slides of dull light that call up dad’s ghost; “Locust will fall in a plague of legions, summon avengers from all the world’s seas, phalanx of marlin clear the wave’s belly, angels with no tongue and spears for faces.”
J.L. Williams, from Locust and Marlin
Espers
Sidekick Books www.drfulminare.com Sidekick Books is a London-based publisher specialising in collaborative projects and helmed by fictional mad alchemist Dr Fulminare. Established in 2009 by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone, its publications include TeamUp pamphlets that pair poets with contemporary illustrators, books resulting from tours and live events – like Psycho Poetica and The Debris Field – and lavish anthologies like the illustrated Birdbook series and Coin Opera 2: Fulminare’s Revenge, a collection of computer game poems.
I was the first cloud. I gulped a meteor down. Blooding the sky, my self’s lazuli butter. My brother below me curls up at low tide and by night time is nowhere. I reach through his oil-dark face to spear awake our fallen submerged sister, the heaven-smelling husk, whose sleep throws up Indian ropes of steam for her lost lover, all mist and misdirection.
John Clegg & Matt Haigh, from Coin Opera 2
Federico’s Ghost
Smokestack www.smokestack-books.co.uk Smokestack is an independent poetry press based in Middlesbrough and run by Andy Croft. It aims to keep open a space for what is left of the radical poetic tradition in the twenty-first century; is interested in the World as well as the Word; believes that poetry is a part of and not apart from society; argues that if poetry does not belong to everyone it is not poetry.
The story is that whole families of fruit-pickers still crept between the furrows of the field at dusk, when for reasons of whiskey or whatever the crop-duster plane sprayed anyway, floating a pesticide drizzle over the pickers who thrashed like dark birds in a glistening white net, except for Federico, a skinny boy who stood apart in his own green row, and, knowing the pilot would not understand in Spanish that he was the son of a whore, instead jerked his arm and thrust an obscene finger. The pilot understood. He circled the plane and sprayed again, watching a fine gauze of poison drift over the brown bodies that cowered and scurried on the ground, and aiming for Federico, leaving the skin beneath his shirt wet and blistered, but still pumping his finger at the sky.
MartĂn Espada, from The Meaning of the Shovel
Templar Poetry www.templarpoetry.com Templar is an innovative poetry imprint with a growing list of fine poets from across the British Isles and beyond published in our superbly designed collections, pamphlets and anthologies. The annual Derwent Poetry Festival in Derbyshire and many other live events present both our new and established authors with their latest titles, reflecting our commitment to linking spoken word with printed works. Iota Poetry is published three times each year in collaboration with the University of Gloucestershire. Templar Poetry and the poets we publish are extensively recognised in major literary and publishing awards.
Smock Puzzle A Dyer’s Thoughts on Looking At Plain Cottons, Linens And Hessians Wedged In Between Imported Goods Down by the docks, waiting in the goods yard for dyestuff, I’m aware of the presence of tangerines, palm stencilled dates, crates of Indian tea, African coffee, mass-market blue and white plates, stacked like Whitstable oysters, the air singed by spices. I’m also aware, and these days increasingly so, by what lies sandwiched between. Rough cuts of natural hemp and linen sacking that knowingly – like antiquity Gods – know instinctively the ways of these goods. Crumpled squares that soothe the rough, leave well alone, keep well apart for great distances. Am I insane lingering on the humble cloth or does pure thought grasp at the chance of a natural affinity?
Jane Weir, from Walking the Block
Daughter of the Nine Muses
Tuba Press www.tubapress.eu Tuba Magazine, (1974) & Press (1977) once of 13 Bute Street, London SW7. In 1980-81 Tuba organised at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 1984 the SE19 address of Partner & Art Editor, Ann Boyd was used, until she died. Partners: Peter Ellson (France) & Charles Graham. With over 25 poets, our present aim is to publish more poetry in 2015, choosing a poet as yet not in a printed paper book.
It was you all the while, my guardian angel, Daughter of the nine muses that set the word Going to the clock of time. Absurd! No, real enough like the mystic angles Of Egypt’s sun-circled pyramids, monuments Built in praise of the God of Death. And all through long seasons I never Thought of you this way, spirit-breath Printed in this text before the questing eye, Eternal human struggle with death’s artifact Is now my battleground and with wry Humour I fight with you still at my side. In the garden the willow creaks, daffodils Inch through snows time will kill.
Evan Gwyn Williams, from Selected Poems
Georgian Wineglass
Two Rivers Press www.tworiverspress.com Two Rivers Press is based in Reading and was founded in 1994 by artist Peter Hay. It has been described as “one of the most characterful small presses in the country”. The Press is interested in new writing from Reading and the Thames Valley, focusing on local poets with a variety of styles, and new editions of classic poems. Bold illustration and striking design are important elements of its work. The Press is strongly rooted in the local community.
Sand and fire, fusion’s rage, split-second gather and blow, swing and spin of the pipe. A slip of a thing, water and air, mizzle-coloured, breath visible. The eye loiters from foot to stem to flaring trumpet, skates the rim. The one tear is for its unbearable beauty, the pontil’s hidden unavoidable scar.
Ian House, from Nothing’s Lost
Limpet
Valley Press www.valleypressuk.com Valley Press is the home of independent publishing in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK; publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction in paperback and ebook formats. The first books with the Valley Press name appeared in October 2008, and we now have more than fifty titles in print. We are also available for freelance book design and publishing consultation – to find out more, contact us through our website.
You only get one shot at me unless you’re armed. Miss, and watch me weep as I weld to my scar; hit, and I’m loss in a locket, a bull in a nutshell. Press my foot as you might dig a thumbnail into your palm to stop from laughing at a poem beginning, dead, lifeless, still… hey presto: black speck eyes and a tragic mouth. As the weight flows I lift on my skirts and wander the village paths, keeping them open while the stars rampage. What measured me has gone. That he, now she, is me, makes all the difference: our stones unravel in the pull of the moon.
John Wedgwood Clarke, from Ghost Pot
Ascititious
for Adrian Clarke
Veer Books www.veerbooks.com Veer Books have been encouraging new work in poetry and poetics since 2003. We have been seeking to create an audience for the now nearly 100 titles we have published through conferences, workshops and readings in a variety of contexts and locations. We remain open to work that challenges without preconceptions.
shred index to infringement call said close in even at or again so making count circumstantial in stroke for one that ranking if given across citation luculent touches option
Karen MacCormack, from Against White
Ward Wood Publishing www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk Ward Wood Publishing is based in London and Shrewsbury and aims to publish high quality poetry, fiction and other forms. It’s run by Adele Ward and Mike Fortune-Wood, who bring a combined 42 years of professional publishing, writing and editorial experience to the company. Readers can expect innovative and exceptional writing in beautifully produced books. Ward Wood Publishing provides an annual prize of chapbook publication to the winner of the International Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition in aid of the homeless judged by Andrew Motion.
Night Watch There was a man who went out into his garden each evening and stared up at the night sky for hours. To his neighbours it must have seemed as though he had lost his sense, each night, warm or cold, in the garden looking upwards. After three years of these long, nightly vigils, this man knew the place of every fixed star in the firmament. He would study the sky closely to see if there were any wanderers, points of light that suddenly appeared and moved among the others. Most nights there weren’t. But still he watched and one day in a hundred he found a traveller and would phone the observatory at the university and tell them. This man stood in his garden for over thirty years and found more unfixed stars than any other.
Noel Duffy, from On Light & Carbon
Chained Melody Celestial chou-fleur earthily turns its creampuff cloud-cuffs under African elephant ears
West House Books www.westhousebooks.co.uk Founded in 1995 and based in Sheffield since 1997 West House has published more than forty books including substantial collections by Geraldine Monk, Bill Griffiths, Gavin Selerie, Kelvin Corcoran and Martin CorlessSmith. Its subsidiary Gargoyle imprint is a prolific publisher of smaller pamphlets and ephemera. West House also distributes books from likeminded publishers and carries a stock of out-of-print neomodernist poetry.
almighty with pendulous sway~sway ~sway brained with chained boredom gregarious legs in solitary enclosures of childhood outings reek sulphuric with caged outrage throws open flaps of sky on mindless plains strumming love songs to sweet Serengeti heart.
Geraldine Monk, from Cluster Songs
Picking Bullaces for Matthew Francis
Worple Press www.worplepress.co.uk Worple Press is co-directed by Peter and Amanda Carpenter and publishes 6-8 books a year by new and established poets. Collections, pamphlets, works in translation, essays, interviews. We have an established reputation for high quality publication standards: books that are a pleasure to handle as well as to read. Recent authors include Andy Brown, Elizabeth Cook, Martyn Crucefix, Izzy Galleymore, John Greening, Kevin Jackson, Clive Wilmer, Anthony Wilson and Mary Woodward. Small Press, Major Players.
With sweet and bitter fused beneath a skin that’s black or white, they ululate their whereabouts with sour calls and subtler clues, these bushes blousy white like clerics’ albs. They are the Ace of Clubs of the hedgerows, the Cue Balls of foragers, the Bull’s-Eyes at the heart of our intent. Bloomed in chalky blues, they used to stain the shepherds’ callused fingers, these wild bullies, laced into the thorny brake at the edge of the lea. We lean in and lunge for them like scuba divers of the briars, sculling round their shoals like seal cubs chasing prey. We cull their bulging yield, laboriously, to lay them later on a slab of bread with cheese and ale. Today, they’re all that is the case.
Andy Brown, from Exurbia
Sonnet
zimZalla zimzalla.co.uk zimZalla is a Manchester press releasing poetry objects, such as greetings cards, a fully playable poetry board game, tea bags, poetry disguised as a willy wonka chocolate bar and poetry in a miniature coffin to be read backwards with a mirror. Authors and artists include Tina Darragh, derek beaulieu, SJ Fowler and Tony Lopez.
]1Q QØqI-@J!{tØ%¬a¦HÿH-XyxFXà 7ÉÃÇÈÃÏÈÃ×Ë °käoÈañ 9¬#3⁄4!5rÄ 7ô°FøkD|C5”3⁄4¡ÃßÐaoØ°FÄ7ì°D|k HÄ7ì°D|ÃkHÄ7Êa øFÖøFÖøFÖøFÖø FÖøF=¬¡ß W>¶qz% ÑçÔÃVñvØJ#Ó” ÓÏÑç Ãs4â9mX#â9}X#â9} DiÏé5,â*ý° E|£Ö°oÈqM#¬a °k|cÂÄ-à kD#!ÖøâD X#Pk¬Kû_`Ö(!V{>Ôÿ1kDa-ÄÊÏû/°ôJ ÿ \ ÷_ μ+ñþi`5ä#ZM!áj yÈWSÈEFÀB >2”Ör2¦\bÖ\Ö\¢Ö\ÂÖ 51⁄4d®9ä%#rÍ!/¡ kyÉ] sÈKFðC^r^C^r _C^r_C^r `C^2”X yIÕ+ÇhåÊ9àZ»rø1mÄ©ò JÈK.jÈK.¡jÈ K. ±jÈK.ÁjÈKF a!/aa1⁄4dÄ«ò°jÄKtD¬Ú B |%ì¦WâþhåJàÿ]ü@»1⁄2×=lÝRÝûSùlû
Tom Watts, from A Dictionary of Poetic Forms
Poetry Organisations
Inpress Books
www.inpressbooks.co.uk
Forward Arts Foundation www.forwardartsfoundation.org
Forward Arts Foundation makes poetry heard. We organise National Poetry Day and we celebrate the best of the year’s poetry through the Forward Prizes for Poetry and the Forward Book of Poetry.
For over ten years, Inpress has been instrumental in supporting the sales and marketing of literary book and magazine publishers across the UK and Ireland. Based in Newcastle upon Tyne, we represent over 40 of the UK and Ireland’s finest independent publishers, selling over 250 new titles each year in genres including poetry, fiction, short stories, cultural non-fiction, literary biography, children’s fiction and picture books.
Poetry Library
Poetry School
The Saison Poetry Library is the UK’s largest collection of modern and contemporary poetry from 1912 onwards. It is open to everyone and free to join and borrow books (on proof of UK address). The library runs a monthly event series called Special Edition and a programme of exhibitions which run throughout the year. The library’s website at www.poetrylibrary.org.uk is a great way to see at glance what events are taking place across the UK and its digital archive at www.poetrymagazines.org. uk is a free database of contemporary poems from UK magazines.
The Poetry School is a national arts education charity based in London. It exists to nurture poetic talent and support the development of poets in aid of a dynamic, diverse and popular contemporary poetry for readers and audiences everywhere. A new programme of face to face and online courses and workshops is launched every term, and other projects run throughout the year. More details about classes are on www.poetryschool.com and www.campus.poetryschool.com is the organisation’s social network, full of conversations, poems, notices and opportunities.
www.poetrylibrary.org.uk
www.poetryschool.com
Poetry Society
Poetry Translation Centre
www.poetrysociety.org.uk
www.poetrytranslation.org
The Poetry Society aims to promote a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry in the UK and beyond, and is one of Britain’s most dynamic arts organisations. It has nearly 4000 members worldwide and publishes the leading poetry magazine, The Poetry Review, and runs innovative education and commissioning programmes, a packed calendar of performances and readings, and numerous prestigious competitions – including the Foyle Young Poets Award and the National Poetry Competition. It is, in the words of Sir Andrew Motion, “the heart and hands of poetry in the UK”.
The Poetry Translation Centre was established by the poet Sarah Maguire in 2004 to translate contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America to a high literary standard. Our aims are to engage with UK immigrant communities for whom poetry is the most important art-form by translating their poets and bringing them to the UK, and to enrich English poetry through making excellent translations of poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America widely available. Our innovative series of dual language chapbooks and publications are the perfect introduction to the very best in world poetry.
Other Publishers
Of course, this fair and anthology do not represent all contemporary UK publishers of poetry. Here are a few more... Alba Publishing Anvil Press Arachne Press ARCADE Publishers Arrowhead Press Awen Banipal Books Barque Press Between the Lines Calder Wood Press Canongate Chatto & Windus Cinnamon Clinic Clutag Press Comma Press Contraband Books Corrupt Press Crater Press Critical Documents Diamond Twig Press Donut Press Equinox Exiled Ink Five Seasons Press Flapjack Press Flipped Eye
Gomer Press Graft Poetry Influx Press Iron Press Jewelmark Press Jonathan Cape Katabasis Kettillonia Latpwing Publications Like This Press Litmus Publishing Littoral Press Longbarrow Press Mariscat Mudfog Press Mulfran Press Nasty Little Press OFF_PRESS Original Plus Oversteps Paekakariki Parthian Books Penguin Perdika Pindrop Poetry Archive Poetry Salzburg
Polygon Pighog Ravenshead Press Red Ceilings Red Squirrel Press Rialto Pamphlets Rockingham Press Route Salt Publishing sine wave peak Shoestring Press Smith/Doorstop Soaring Penguin Soundswrite Press Stairwell Books Sylph Editions tall-lighthouse Tangerine Press Two Ravens Press Vintage V. Press Poetry Waterloo Press Waywiser Press White Adder Press
List of Exhibitors 13 Pages A Midsummer Night’s Press Acumen Publications Agenda Poetry Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers Ambit Annexe Arc Publications Blart Bloodaxe Books Burning Eye Books Candlestick Press Carcanet Press CB editions Cultured Llama Egg Box Emma Press Enitharmon Press Etruscan Books Eyewear Publishing Five Leaves Publishing Faber & Faber Flarestack Poets
Gatehouse Press Grey Hen Press HappenStance Hearing Eye Henningham Family Press Hercules Editions Holland Park Press if p then q Isobar Press Knives Forks and Spoons Press Leafe Press Melos Press MIEL New Departures Nine Arches Press Oystercatcher Press Peepal Tree Press Penned in the Margins Picador Poetry Rack Press Reality Street Roncadora Press Seren Books
Shearsman Books Sidekick Books Smokestack Books Templar Poetry Tuba Press Two Rivers Press Valley Press Veer Books Ward Wood Publishing West House Books Worple Press zimZalla Forward Arts Foundation Inpress Books Poetry Library Poetry School Poetry Society Poetry Translation Centre
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