INPRESS BOOKS | JULY – DECEMBER 2011
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INPRESS BOOKS C A T A L O G U E | J ul y – d ece m ber 2 0 1 1
Don Morrison
“Inpress is an efficient and necessary operation, which brings poetry and literary fiction publishers together in a collective, and in the process greatly benefits its members as well as their audiences. It is a powerful force for good, matching diversity with high quality, and old technologies with new. It deserves widespread support and admiration.” Inpress
Sir Andrew Motion, poet, novelist and biographer Poet Laureate 1999–2009 G e o ff B rya n
“Inpress does invaluable work supporting the small presses who take risks, nurture bold new voices and publish a wealth of poets in translation and groundbreaking anthologies. Their bookshop is an Aladdin’s cave where I am always discovering new poets to inspire my own writing.”
J o n ath a n Brooks
Ph i l R o b e y
Pascale Petit, T.S. Eliot Prize nominee for 2010 “Discovering the Inpress website is a little like chancing upon a hidden gem of a bookshop on a sunny afternoon and happily losing all sense of time as you browse the beguiling titles on its shelves. It’s easy enough to find first-rate poetry collections among these pages; the hard bit is narrowing the list down...” Julia Copus, Forward Prize-nominated poet (in 1995 and 2010)
H e n ry T h o m p s o n ( lo n d o n )
Ian TripP
F e l I c i t y K n i g ht
Contents
Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Non-Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Magazines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Publisher Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Distribution & Sales Representation . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Inpress is the specialist
sales and marketing agency for independent publishers. We offer comprehensive sales coverage across the UK and Ireland, and also operate in Australia and Europe (see page 82). Inpress represents its publishers at trade fairs, carries out market research projects and manages an ecommerce website at www.inpressbooks.co.uk. In 2011 we launched our eBook sales and distribution service and welcomed publishers Peepal Tree Press and Red Squirrel Press to our list.
Rachael Ogden Managing Director rachael@inpressbooks.co.uk James Hogg Sales and Marketing Executive james@inpressbooks.co.uk Emily Tate Finance Executive emily@inpressbooks.co.uk
[M os co w] G la s Bloodaxe Books [Tarset] Red Squirrel [Morpeth]
Iron Press [Cullercoats] Inpress Flambard Press [Newcastle] Smokestack [Middlesbrough]
Arc [Todmorden]
Peepal Tree [Leeds]
Comma [Manchester]
Smith Doorstop [Sheffield]
Dedalus [Dublin] Salmon [Cliffs of Moher]
Cinnamon [Blaenau Ffestiniog]
Alcemi [Aberystwyth]
Modern Poetry in Translation Waywiser [Oxford]
Egg Box The Rialto Elastic Press [Norwich]
Rockingham Press [Ware] Seren [Bridgend] Two Rivers [Reading]
Acumen [Brixham]
Banipal Hearing Eye The London Magazine Menard Penned in the Margins Tall Lighthouse [London]
Poetr y
P oet r y
The Bee-Loud Glade edited by Pat Boran
The Man on Crewe Station John Godfrey
Anthology of new Irish poetry, set to music on accompanying CD.
Debut full collection from one of the Ware Poets.
The Bee-Loud Glade is a pocket-sized anthology of Irish poetry, including a selection of the poems on audio CD in various musical settings, performed by the much-praised Crazy Dog Audio Theatre.
In this debut full collection, John Godfrey’s poems range widely in their subject matter – including memories of the railways, postcards from Penzance, a glider over the Chilterns, a pink bicycle, old maps, the road to Santa Fe and also a man from the Twin Towers who survived 9/11.
A snapshot of the work of Dedalus Press in recent years, The Bee-Loud Glade is also the basis of a live stage show in which actor-musicians reinterpret contemporary Irish poetry for a live audience. Pat Boran was born in Portlaoise, Ireland in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin. He has published four collections of poetry. His most recent title is his memoir The Invisible Prison: Scenes from an Irish Childhood. A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and presenter of The Poetry Programme on RTÉ Radio 1, he has also edited Wingspan: A Dedalus Sampler (2006) and Flowing, Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry (Dedalus, 2009). In 2007 he was elected to the membership of Aosdána and in 2008 he received the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award of the University of St Thomas, St Paul, Minnesota.
Dedalus Press | Paperback | £10.99 978-1-906614-45-4 | 216x140mm | 70pp | July 2011
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“John Godfrey’s poems don’t let you down. Every word, every image has been picked with care... and the rhythms have been fine-tuned so that reading them is a pleasure, and feels effortless… He is frequently funny and often touching. It is not surprising that so many of these poems have won prizes – they are prize-winning poems.” Frances Wilson John Godfrey lives in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. The Man on Crewe Station is his first full collection, but his poems have been widely published in magazines such as Acumen and The Frogmore Papers, and have won numerous prizes – including first prize in Open Poetry Competitions organised by the Chiltern Writers Group, the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society, Kick Start Poets, Northampton Literature Group and Peterloo Poets. Rockingham Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-904851-40-0 | 210x140mm | 80pp | July 2011
poet r y
Accord John Idris Jones “… this is pure poetry, a pleasure to read and re-read” – Zulfikar Ghose.
An important presence in Welsh publishing and poetry, John Idris Jones’ new and selected poems, Accord, spans his writing from the 1960s to the present. Place is important on this globe of furrows with troughs of memory following our plough. Everywhere there are fragments. A mound of earth will make a stone, or Caesar. “That’s John Idris Jones – ploughing his lonely furrow, conveying subtle truths in simple language. Elsewhere he has written, ‘The sky is quiet with distant birds.’ Beat that.” Herbert Williams John Idris Jones was born and brought up at Llanrhaeadr-ymMochnant, where William Morgan translated the Bible into Welsh. He has worked as a teacher, as a lecturer in America and ran his own press, John Jones Publishing. Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-907090-31-8 | 216x140mm | 96pp | July 2011
Its Words You Want Patrick Kehoe Debut collection from widely-published Irish poet.
The earliest of these poems reflect time spent in Barcelona where Patrick Kehoe taught English. Indeed many of the poems in this collection conjure the life of a young man abroad in that city, five years or so after the death of General Franco. Later poems pay moving tribute to his late parents and the people of his native city, Enniscorthy, as well as revisiting Barcelona. Other poems evoke in sensuous, luxuriant meditations the shimmering essence of a Corfu summer. Patrick Kehoe was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Ireland in 1956. His first poems were published by the late James Liddy in broadsheets and issues of The Gorey Detail. Early poems were also published in the Irish Press. In recent times his work has appeared in Natural Bridge, Cyphers and The Scaldy Detail. Formerly a teacher, he has been working as a journalist in Dublin for over twenty years. He is also a guitarist and songwriter. Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-77-2 | 210x134mm | 78pp | July 2011
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P oet r y
Witness Trees Lorna Shaughnessy
Time Lines David Underdown
“Poetry that is beautifully formed and unflinching” – Mary O’Donnell.
Winner of the 2010 Cinnamon Press Poetry Collection Award.
Witness trees, or testigos, are umbrella pines that survive the passing of sand dunes in the Donana Nature Reserve, in the south-western Spanish province of Huelva. In her collection of the same name, Lorna Shaughnessy chronicles several mysterious journeys in a search for resolution. Her painterly touch includes unsentimental and occasionally darkly humorous portraits of life in the North of Ireland, of having one’s home bombed, and a moving account of Good Friday, 1998, set against the most domestic of backdrops.
Time Lines traces an arc from coming-of-age to maturity, a biographical narrative that avoids solipsism and instead looks out to engage with the wider world: be it the girl on the Chittagong train in Bangladesh, or the effect of climate change on the farmers of Einarsfjord in Greenland.
“Shaughnessy writes with lyric intensity and an uncompromising music which never offers the reader the option of easy reconciliation, because the witness trees she speaks of symbolise endurance above all and despite all. This resonant collection offers a glimpse into someone else’s soul-matter, through poetry that is beautifully formed and unflinching.” Mary O’Donnell
Beautifully crafted, humanely observed and with an ear for the muscularity as well as the lyricism of language, Time Lines is a richly rewarding debut collection. David Underdown grew up in various places in England but has lived in the west of Scotland since the late 1970s. Twelve years ago he moved with his wife to the village of Corrie on the Isle of Arran; six years ago he concentrated on writing poetry. His poetry appears in the Cinnamon Press anthology Storm at Galesburg (2009), as well as in various anthologies from Leaf Books, Ragged Raven Press and Peterloo Poets.
Lorna Shaughnessy was born in Belfast and lives in County Galway. Her first collection of poems, Torching the Brown River, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. Her poem ‘Grasping the Nettle’ was selected for The Forward Book of Poetry 2009.
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-78-9 | 210x134mm | 78pp | July 2011
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Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-907090-38-7 | 216x140mm | 64pp | July 2011
poet r y
Venice Haiku Michael Wilkin
Guarding the Flame Majella Cullinane
Latest in Iron Press’s best-selling series of haiku books.
Debut collection from winner of the 2007 Hennessy Award for Emerging Poetry.
North East poet Michael Wilkin, previously published in the Bloodaxe collection Ten North-East Poets: An Anthology, is a regular visitor to Venice. Over the years he has penned these vivid haiku, 51 in total, seeing the watery city in a new light. The book is a distinctive A7 in size, beautifully produced on textured paper, with one haiku per page.
Taking its title from the myth surrounding St Bridgid’s flame in Kildare, Guarding the Flame explores women’s voices from Irish history and myth, from the everyday woman in the market who imagines herself transformed, to the voice of the river goddess Sionna, to Joyce’s Nora Barnacle. The collection contains poems of nature, of myth, of travel in Europe, Nepal and Africa. There are poems examining belonging and unbelonging, metamorphosis, inconstancy, and the country Majella Cullinane currently calls home, New Zealand.
Aboard a leaping Vaporetto – / The road to Venice / Splashes in our faces. Today the rain-pocked canals / Are a weeping grey – / Swept clean of gondolas. Michael Wilkin is a native Tynesider who has lived for the past thirty-five years in Cullercoats. He is a former trade union official at the Swan Hunter Shipyards and secondhand bookseller. The book is dedicated to the author’s partner, Jean Thurston.
Majella Cullinane was born and raised in Limerick. She became a New Zealand resident in 2008, and currently resides in Wellington where she tutors in Creative Writing. She has previously received a Sean Dunne Young Writer’s Award for Poetry, the Hennessy XO/Sunday Tribune Literary Award for Emerging Poetry and also an Irish Arts Council Award. Her poems and short stories have been published in Ireland, the UK and New Zealand.
Iron Press | Paperback | £5.00 978-0-956572-51-6 | 105x74mm | 64pp | July 2011
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-79-6 | 210x134mm | 70pp | August 2011
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P oet r y
Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands edited by Eric Doumerc and Roy McFarlane Co-edited by Birmingham’s current Poet Laureate.
Celebrate Wha? is an anthology of poems about identity and race, curried goat ‘n’ rice. Ten poets – Dreadlock Alien, Sue Brown, Marcia Calame, Evoke, Martin Glynn, Michelle Hubbard, Kokumo, Roy McFarlane, Chester Morrison and Moqapi Selassie – explore what it means to be black and British and from the West Midlands. Celebrate Wha? celebrates writing with a reggae rhythm, born out of a heady mixture of dub, grime and performance poetry, politics and music, anger and laughter. Eric Doumerc teaches English at the University of ToulouseLe Mirail in France. His books include Caribbean Civilisation: The English-Speaking Caribbean since Independence (2003) and An Introduction to Poetry in English (2007). Roy McFarlane was born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage. He is a former Starbucks Poet in Residence and a member of the New October Poets. He is currently Birmingham’s Poet Laureate.
Smokestack | Paperback | £7.95 978-0-956814-40-1 | 197x127mm | 120pp | August 2011
Farewell to the Earth Christopher James Second collection from winner of the 2008 National Poetry competition.
In Christopher James’ mercurial second collection, Seamus Heaney breaks down in a lane, John Lennon haunts the Great Wall of China, and King Midas is spotted somewhere in Herefordshire. Reaching from the Humber to the Thames, from Kashmir to Cromer, it’s a dizzying and unpredictable world tour. In the shadow of environmental disaster and the possibility of dragons, there are more mundane dramas to face too: moving house, family secrets, marriage proposals that do not go to plan, and children woken in the night by rain. Christopher James was born in Scotland in 1975 and educated at Newcastle and UEA, where he graduated with an MA in Creative Writing. He won the National Poetry competition in 2008 with ‘Farewell to the Earth’, and his other accolades include the 2002 Bridport Prize and the Ledbury Poetry Prize twice, in 2003 and 2006. His previous collection, The Invention of Butterfly (2006), was listed by the Independent as one of its top ten poetry books, and saw him hailed as “the UK’s brightest newcomer” by the Poetry Society. He now lives in Suffolk. Arc Publications | Hardback & Paperback | £11.99 / £8.99 978-1-906570-71-2 (hb) / 978-1-906570-70-5 (pb) | 216x138mm | 80pp August 2011
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poet r y
Swarf Chris Kinsey New poems from the 2008 BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year. Chris Kinsey is one of our finest Nature Poets. In 2008 she won the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year competition. But as the poems in Swarf reveal, Chris Kinsey is also interested in human nature, especially among those whose lives are easily overlooked and undervalued – many of these poems draw on her experiences working with the elderly, with excluded students and adults with learning disabilities. Swarf is a book about life in a small town, its mad Fridays, slow Sundays and long afternoons in the pub. It is a book of poems about living and learning, about hospitals, park-life, martial arts and greyhounds. Chris Kinsey is a freelance writer, tutor and rescuer of greyhounds. Her previous books are Kung Fu Lullabies (2004) and Cure for a Crooked Smile (2009), both published by Ragged Raven Press. She writes a regular Nature Diary for Cambria and was runner-up in Natur Cymru’s 2010 ‘Inspired by Nature’ competition. She has read at the Ledbury and Hay Festivals, and her work has been featured on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Wales. She is a member of Academi, Powys Arts Forum and the board of Ty Newydd, The National Writing Centre for Wales. She lives in midWales.
Smokestack | Paperback | £7.95 978-0-956417-52-7 | 197x127mm | 64pp | August 2011
Angel in Flames: Selected Poems & Translations 1967-2011 James Scully Major retrospective collection of one of America’s essential radical poets. Angel in Flames brings together, for the first time, the best of James Scully’s poetry. The works featured begin in the 1960s – when it was claimed that Vietnamese villages had to be destroyed to be saved – and continue on to the 21st-century wars on terror. There are two angels in this book: one is Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, the other an unemployed and illiterate Puerto Rican man. Scully’s poetry addresses head-on the intellectual and cultural degradation of an imperial order whose ambition appears to be to reduce the globe to a shrunken head on a stick. James Scully was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1937. In the 1960s he was heavily involved in the anti-war movement in the US. In 1973-74 he and his family lived in Chile; after the military coup their Santiago apartment was used as a safe house by the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. He has published ten books of poetry, and now lives in Vermont. Smokestack | Paperback | £8.95 978-0-956417-58-9 | 197x127mm | 200pp August 2011
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P oet r y
Night Horses Ilsa Thielan
Loudness Judy Brown
New collection from Irish poet, photographer and visual artist.
Winner of the 2010 Manchester Poetry Prize and the 2009 Poetry London Competition.
As a photographer, Ilsa Thielan’s work pays homage to the beauty of the West of Ireland, its stunning nature and unique rural scenery. This quality of perception also informs her poetry: in Night Horses we see captured on the page all the lyric intensity and wonder which brings to life the unique character of this fascinating part of the world.
Loudness is the beautiful debut collection from Judy Brown. Her poetry combines a straightforward manner with artful complexity, a gift for ironic humour with exacting observations of the everyday. Titles like ‘The ExPats’, ‘The P45’ and ‘The Crash’ kick-start edgy narratives, full of characters who will suffer for their modern sins.
Ilsa Thielan is a writer, photographer and artist. She has exhibited her work in both Ireland and abroad and has travelled extensively in North America and Africa. Her poetry appears most recently in the Salmon Poetry anthology Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (2010). German by birth, she has lived in County Clare for over thirty years.
“Her writing is direct and sensuous, alive to colour, touch, and above all, sound.” Kate Bingham, Poetry London
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-81-9 | 210x134mm | 64pp | August 2011
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Judy Brown was born in Cheshire and has lived in Northumbria, Cumbria and Hong Kong. She studied English Literature at Cambridge and Newcastle Universities and now lives between London and Derbyshire. She won the 2010 Manchester Poetry Prize and the 2009 Poetry London Competition, and received the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Poetry Prize in 2005. She was shortlisted for the 2010 Basil Bunting Poetry Award, and has placed in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition and others. Her poems have appeared in the Bloodaxe anthology Identity Parade (2010) and The Forward Book of Poetry (Faber, 2006). Seren | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-854115-47-8 | 216x138mm | 72pp | September 2011
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Migrations Anne Cluysenaar
Love in a Mist Anne Connolly
“One of our most thought-provoking and accomplished poets” – Jeremy Hooker.
“The over-riding sense is one of defiant joy… a life-affirming collection” – A.C. Clarke.
Migrations is a substantial collection of poems, centring around the innovative long poem ‘Clay’, based on The Epic of Gilgamesh. “Following her earlier major long poems, ‘Vaughan Variations’ and Batu-Angas, Cluysenaar has found... a new source for continuing her profoundly serious meditations on nature and the making of human life in time. It is a book firmly rooted in a Welsh place and Welsh landscapes, but with a sense of connections far across space and time. Migrations on the whole is a sustained yet various collection of poems, at once movingly personal and philosophical, by one of our most thought-provoking and accomplished poets.” Jeremy Hooker Anne Cluysenaar was born in Belgium but is an Irish citizen. She has published several poetry collections, including Timeslips: New & Selected Poems (Carcanet, 1997) and Batu-Angas: Envisioning Nature with Alfred Russel Wallace (Seren, 2008). Her work also appears in Poetry 1900-2000: One Hundred Poets from Wales (Library of Wales, 2007). She is a fellow of Academi. Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-907090-41-7 | 216x140mm | 96pp | September 2011
Anne Connolly’s first collection started with a photograph of love-in-a-mist flowers and a search for their Latin name. Many of the poems explore the theme of loyalty and love of one’s country and their inescapable link with conflict throughout the ages, balanced and rounded out by the enduring bonds of affection and parental love. “With their engaging dialogue between the personal and the political – scathing one moment, poignant the next – these poems by Anne Connolly are wonderfully readable.” Eleanor Livingstone, StAnza Director Anne Connolly was born in Northern Ireland. Her poems have been published in the likes of Magma, Mslexia, Poetry Scotland and The Tablet. Her pamphlet Downside Up was published by Calder Wood Press in 2008. Anne currently runs the School of Poets at the Scottish Poetry Library. She is particularly interested in performance poetry, and was the winner of the Winter 2009 Glasgow Slam.
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-44-7 | 216x138mm | 79pp | September 2011
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The Ivy Hides the Fig-Ripe Duchess Ellie Evans
A Roof of Red Tiles edited by Rowan B. Fortune
Commended in Poetry Society’s Members’ Poems for Autumn 2010.
Includes winners of Cinnamon Press Poetry and Fiction awards.
The Ivy Hides the Fig-Ripe Duchess is an exhilarating first collection of poetry from Welsh writer Ellie Evans. Using a surrealist palette of imagery and a tightly focused idiom, Evans takes us on strange journeys: to the post-apocalyptic world of the title poem, or into a skewed 18th-century Venice. Together they unearth childhood trauma, fraught or intense relationships, and a singular delight in rebellion and escape. Poems like ‘Picnic with Earthquakes’ and ‘Jekyll Island, Georgia’ deftly align exotic locales (in Greece and the US) with intimate states of mind. There is also a fascination with art and history, and a palpable delight in technique: the book includes sonnets, a villanelle and triolets, and her concise free verse often employs rhyme, half-rhyme, and subtle alliteration.
A Roof of Red Tiles introduces new and emerging voices in short story and poetry, including the award-winning title story by Jane Maclaughlin, and prize-winning poems by Louise Warren, together with a range of innovative and gripping poetry and fiction by Sharon Black, Nicola Warwick, Catherine Coldstream and a range of other new writers to watch out for.
Ellie Evans was born in Carmarthen and read English at Oxford. She worked in publishing and for the Medical Research Council, before living in Hong Kong, teaching English. She has spent most of her adult life teaching in London, but is now based in Powys. Her poems have been published in several anthologies and in magazines including Poetry Wales, The Rialto and Acumen. She has given readings at the Bath Literature Festival and Poetry Café, Dartington’s Ways with Words and The Muses’ Workshop on the Greek island of Spetses. Seren | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-854115-46-1 | 216x138mm | 64pp | September 2011
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Rowan B. Fortune is assistant editor at Cinnamon Press. His writing engages with several forms including poetry, fiction, reviews and essays. He runs a YouTube channel with a large subscriber base that features his work in philosophy, aesthetics and literature, including a series of mixed media micro-fictions. He recently completed an MA in novel writing and is working on a first novel and collection of short stories and micro-fictions.
Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-907090-40-0 | 216x140mm | 144pp | September 2011
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Daytime Astronomy Paul Grattan Anthologised in seminal 2004 Bloodaxe collection The New Irish Poets.
Eight years in the making, the poems in Daytime Astronomy were, like the rest of us, born in the heart of a dying star. They span places as far afield as Belfast, Dublin, Glasgow, Moscow, Phnom Penh and Shanghai, and all the liminal spaces in between. The poems explore time and space, pain and abandoned love, faced with a hill to climb to catch the world home. Paul Grattan was born in Glasgow in 1971. He moved to the north of Ireland in 1995, and gained an MA in Creative Writing at the Poets’ House / Lancaster University, studying under the late James Simmons. In 2002 the Edinburgh Review published his first collection, The End of Napoleon’s Nose. His work has appeared in several anthologies, including The New Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2004) and Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland (Dedalus Press, 2009). He lives in Belfast and is currently pursuing a PhD on the work of the Scottish poet Kenneth White at the University of Ulster. Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-76-5 | 210x134mm | 88pp | September 2011
Ireland Is Changing Mother Rita Ann Higgins “A brilliantly spiky, surreal blend of humour and social issues” – Ruth Padel, The Independent on Sunday. Ireland Is Changing Mother is the latest collection from Rita Ann Higgins: provocative and heartwarming poems of high jinx, jittery grief and telling social comment by a gutsy, anarchic chronicler of the Irish dispossessed. “A quite untameable poet. Higgins roams the provincial towns and countryside of Ireland fomenting rebellion and writing with unstaunchable energy of everything warm and unrespectable in Irish life. Her voice is like nobody else’s...” Peter Porter, Poetry Book Society Bulletin “Higgins’s voices are so distinctive and real… an hilarious, absorbing and thoroughly disturbing experience.” Kate Clanchy, The Independent Rita Ann Higgins was born in 1955 in Galway, where she still lives. She has since published nine books of poetry, including Sunny Side Plucked (1996), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and An Awful Racket (2001), both published by Bloodaxe, and Hurting God: Part Essay Part Rhyme (2010) from Salmon Poetry. First published in 2005, her Bloodaxe retrospective Throw in the Vowels: New & Selected Poems was reissued in 2010 with an audio CD of her reading her poems. Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852249-05-2 | 216x138mm | 64pp | September 2011
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P oet r y
Jacket in Production
Frances Horovitz: Collected Poems edited by Roger Garfitt
Home Thoughts James Kirkup
New edition of one of the landmark volumes in post-war British poetry.
Posthumous collection by internationallyacclaimed North-East poet.
Frances Horovitz’s Collected Poems (1985) was one of the landmark volumes of post-war British poetry. Many of her poems were inspired by the remote Cotswold valley where she lived for ten years; others by the border country of Cumbria and the Welsh Marches. She was one of the finest ever readers of poetry, and this new edition includes an audio CD of her reading a selection of her poems, along with an interview.
Home Thoughts is a collection of poetry inspired by a set of Christmas cards produced in 2005 by South Tyneside Libraries, and illustrations by local artists. The postcards ignited James Kirkup’s memories of his childhood and early adult life in the place of his birth, South Shields. The James Kirkup Collection, his archive, is stored at locations in the town, and these poems capture with extreme fondness and clarity his embracing and celebration of one man’s hometown.
“She has perfect rhythm, great delicacy… her poetry does seem to me to approach greatness.” Peter Levi “The Collected Poems are, after all, what we are left with when all the symposia and elegies have withered. One is reminded, gratefully, of John Updike’s appreciation of Wallace Stevens: ‘What a good use of life, to leave behind one beautiful book’.” James Wood, The Times Frances Horovitz (1938-83) was greatly loved and respected not only as a poet, but also as a broadcaster and performer of poetry. She published four collections of poems, including Snow Light, Water Light (Bloodaxe, 1983). She died in 1983, aged 45, after a long illness. This Collected Poems is edited by her husband, the poet and critic Roger Garfitt.
Bloodaxe | Paperback | £12.00 978-1-852249-25-0 | 234x156mm | 128pp | September 2011
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James Kirkup was born in South Shields in 1918 and died in 2009 in Andorra. He was an internationallyacclaimed poet, memoirist, novelist, playwright and translator. He was the first person to take up the Gregory Fellowship in Poetry, following its inauguration in 1950 and was also the first writer to hold a ‘Writer in Residence’ post within an academic institution (Bath Academy of Arts) in the UK. He later spent time in Sweden, Spain, Malaysia, Japan, the US and finally Andorra. Recent publications of his work include Marsden Bay (Red Squirrel, 2008) and the reprint of A Bewick Bestiary (Red Squirrel, 2009).
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-45-4 | 248x150mm | 48pp | September 2011
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All That Lives Valerie Laws
Haywire: New & Selected Poems Luljeta Lleshanaku
New poetry from double prize-winner in the National Poetry competition.
New & Selected from prominent young Albanian poet with growing reputation in Europe and the US.
These poems on sex, death and pathology, both funny and moving, tackle taboo subjects with cutting-edge science and rich sensuality. All That Lives arises largely from residencies in pathology and neuroscience research institutes. It traces the author’s personal journey from witnessing the death of loved ones, through her quest to understand the science of dying down to brain cell level. At the same time, after a long marriage, her rediscovery of modern dating brings hilarious, earthy life to an unflinching collection which has already achieved great acclaim. “Law’s images are vivid and the language rattles and sparks… she chooses her subjects carefully, seeking the intense and the pregnant within them and offering the reader something of the ‘real’ experience they contain.” Poetry Review Valerie Laws is a poet, playwright, novelist and mathematician. Her nine other published books include two poetry collections from Peterloo, an edited Star Trek anthology from Iron Press, and the crime novel The Rotting Spot (Red Squirrel, 2009; winner of a Northern Promise Award, shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize). She has twice won prizes in the National Poetry competition.
Luljeta Lleshanaku belongs to the first ‘post-totalitarian’ generation of Albanian poets. Haywire: New & Selected Poems is her first British publication, and draws on two editions published in the US, Fresco: Selected Poems (2002) and Child of Nature (2010), as well as a selection of more recent work. In Haywire she turns to the fallout of her country’s past and its relation to herself and her family. Translations by Luljeta Lleshanaku with Henry Israeli, Shpresa Qatipi and others. “Her poetry has little connection to poetic styles past or present in America, Europe, or the rest of the world... We have in Lleshanaku a completely original poet.” Peter Constantine “These impressive poems carry a poignance much like the first buds of spring, a mark of survival and insistent life... Luljeta Lleshanaku speaks to us one and all.” Robert Creeley Luljeta Lleshanaku was born in Elbasan, Albania in 1968. She grew up under house arrest in Enver Hoxha’s Stalinist dictatorship, and was unable to attend college or publish her poetry until the eventual collapse of the regime in the early 1990s. She won the prestigious Kristal Vilenica Prize in 2009, and has given readings in America, Europe and in Ireland at the Poetry Now Festival in 2010. Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-43-0 | 216x138mm | 72pp | September 2011
Bloodaxe | Paperback | £9.95 978-1-852249-13-7 | 216x138mm | 160pp | September 2011
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Cusp Graham Mort “One of contemporary verse’s most accomplished practitioners” – Sarah Crown, The Guardian. Graham Mort’s formal rigour, instinctive compassion and warm humanity shine through in this new book, his first since the acclaimed Visibility: New & Selected Poems. Readers will now find a new sort of verse-line, alternating between short and long to propel each narrative along. Also included is the remarkable, ambitious long poem ‘Electricity’, a fizzing, ecstatic celebration of life after surviving a serious heart attack and bypass surgery. “A master technician.” Sarah Crown, The Guardian (on Visibility: New & Selected Poems) Graham Mort lectures in the Creative Writing Department at Lancaster University. Among his many awards are the Cheltenham Poetry Competition first prize (twice), a major Eric Gregory Award and two prizes in the Arvon Foundation International Poetry competition. His 1997 collection Circular Breathing was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His most recent collections are A Night on the Lash (2004) and Visibility: New & Selected Poems (2007), both published by Seren. He is also the winner of the 2007 Bridport Prize for his short fiction, the most recent of which appears in Touch (Seren, 2010). Seren | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-854115-48-5 | 216x138mm | 96pp | September 2011
The C Word: An Anthology of Writing from Cardiff edited by Kate North Features poetry, short stories and micro-fiction from students of University of Wales, Cardiff. Kate North brings together an exciting and diverse anthology of new writing from students of the University of Wales, Cardiff. From poetry to short stories and micro-fiction, The C Word introduces a sparkling array of new voices on the literary scene. Kate North’s first novel, Eva Shell, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2008. Her poetry is widely anthologised and appears in Not a Muse (Haven, 2009) and The Pterodactyl’s Wing: Welsh World Poetry (Parthian, 2003). She was poetry editor for Aesthetica international arts magazine between 2006 and 2007, and currently edits Iota magazine. Kate has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University and an MA in Creative Writing from UEA. She currently lives and teaches in Cardiff. Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-907090-50-9 | 216x140mm | 144pp | September 2011
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From the Dark Room Sue Rose
Heavenly Questions Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Winner of the 2009 Troubadour Poetry Prize.
Winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize 2011.
“This collection is rich with the life of the body, with flesh, seed, sex, blood, birth, family love, all in language that is truthful, brave and tender.” Gillian Clarke
Gjertrud Schnackenberg is a major voice in American poetry, known for her imaginatively daring poetry of ideas. Her first new book for a decade, Heavenly Questions features six long poems of passion, mourning and redemption.
“Sue Rose’s poems are at once lyrical and truthful in their exploration of the difficult transitions in life, and in the intricate relations between daughters and parents, illicit lovers, the bereaved and those they’ve lost.” Tamar Yoseloff “Often in Sue Rose’s poems, light turns out to contain darkness and vice versa... Words too, carrying their freight of different meanings and associations - ‘travelling light’, ‘the dark room of childhood’ combine, becoming what they always had it in them to be.” Sheenagh Pugh Sue Rose is a widely-published poet and translator. In 2009 she won the prestigious Troubadour Poetry Prize and, in 2008, the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year competition. She has also been commended or placed in the National, the Peterloo and the Wigtown Poetry competitions. She is a founder member of Scatterlings, a group of poets formed to give readings in the south-east and beyond.
Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-907090-42-4 | 216x140mm | 64pp | September 2011
“Heavenly Questions demands that we come face to face with matters of mortal importance, and it does so in a wildly original music that is passionate, transporting, and heart-rending.” Griffin Poetry Prize 2011, Judges’ Citation “She is the most accomplished master of blank verse on the planet… Here is the most powerful love poetry of our time.” Eliza Griswold, The American Prospect “Schnackenberg has written nothing less than a Miltonic book-length poem on eternity, infinity, and the meaning of life.” D.H. Tracy, Poetry Gjertrud Schnackenberg was born in 1953 in Tacoma, Washington. Her retrospective Supernatural Love: Poems 1976-2000 (Bloodaxe, 2001) includes her four collections, Portraits and Elegies (1982), The Lamplit Answer (1985), A Gilded Lapse of Time (1995) and The Throne of Labdacus (2000), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. She has won many other literary awards, and divides her time between Tacoma and Boston. Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852249-22-9 | 216x138mm | 80pp | September 2011
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Stray Birds / Éanlaith Strae by Rabindranath Tagore with Irish-language versions by Gabriel Rosenstock English-Irish edition celebrating 150th anniversary of world-renowned Bengali poet. After his return from Japan, Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel Laureate, brought out English versions of his own Bengali originals, a book not widely known in the West: Stray Birds (1916). These consist of poetic aphorisms, possibly influenced by haiku, ranging in mood from joyous to contemplative, playful and innocent, profound and ecstatic. Ireland’s leading translator, Gabriel Rosenstock, has produced exquisite Irish-language versions to match Tagore’s timeless works, earthy yet transcendent, in this special bilingual edition to mark the 150th anniversary of the great Bengali poet. Illustrated by Ian Joyce. “[Rosenstock] employs the poetic resources of all ages and languages to describe the central dramas of the soul with beauty, humour and precision.” Gwyneth Lewis Gabriel Rosenstock is the author/translator of over 150 books, including 13 volumes of poetry and a volume of haiku, mostly in Irish (Gaelic). A member of Aosdána, he has given readings in Europe, South, Central and North America, India, Australia and Japan and has been published in various leading international journals. Uttering Her Name (Salmon, 2009) is his debut volume of poems in English. Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-83-3 | 210x134mm | 88pp | September 2011
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The Salt Harvest Eoghan Walls New collection from Irish poet featured in Granta’s New Writing series. The Salt Harvest is the debut collection from a startling new talent, Eoghan Walls. Dark and evocative, these poems carry rich, multi-layered descriptions of the natural world, and cast a sardonic yet tender eye over the human condition. All the climates of his native Ireland inspire poems of muscular imagery and complex form, each line ‘packed with ore’ and threaded with humour and imaginative playfulness. There is also an ambivalent, often deeply ironic attitude towards a culture once steeped in religion. “In Walls’ poetry we find an acute sensitivity to register, the voice hesitant, casual, mild, and, in its own way, open to anything.” John Redmond Eoghan Walls won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006, and recently completed a PhD in English Literature at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University, Belfast. He has taught English in Ireland as well as in Heidelberg, Rwanda, and for the Open University. His poem ‘The Naming of the Rat’ was featured in Granta’s New Writing 14 (2006); his other work has appeared widely in magazines like Poetry London, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review and The London Magazine.
Seren | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-854115-49-2 | 216x138mm | 64pp | September 2011
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Confer Ahren Warner Debut full collection from much talked-about poet still in his 20s; received Eric Gregory Award in 2010. Confer is a book between two cities – London and Paris – with detours via rural and small-town England, drunkenness and death camps in Bavaria, the American absurd and the lost libraries of the Roman Empire. It contains love and lust poems, variations on Baudelaire and conversations with Nietzsche and Auden. This is an impressive debut collection by a young poet already well-known for his innovative, highly musical poetry. “Ahren Warner has almost invented a new kind of Fin de siècle.” Annie Freud “Confer confers upon him the status of a central figure in a new generation of British poets.” Roddy Lumsden Ahren Warner was born in 1986, and grew up in Lincolnshire before moving to London. He has published his work widely in magazines and anthologies, including Identity Parade (2010) and Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (2009) from Bloodaxe, and in Re:, a pamphlet from Donut Press (2011). He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2010. He is currently completing a PhD in Philosophy and Literature at the University of London, and divides his time between Paris and London. Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852249-14-4 | 216x138mm | 72pp | September 2011
Catulla et al Tiffany Atkinson “Tiffany Atkinson is smart, sexy and often very, very funny” – Kathryn Gray, Poetry International Web. Catulla et al summons up the sensual and scandalous spirit of the Latin poet Catullus – his lyricism, diatribe and bawdy – by turns wrenching, cynical and outrageous. But whereas the Roman love chronicler is a young man about town, Tiffany Atkinson’s Catulla is a freewheeling female, confronting modern mores with both ambivalence and uneasy embarrassment. “Atkinson achieves sophistication without brittleness, and illustrates that much of the most intelligent and accessible poetry of the last five years… is being written by young women.” W.N. Herbert, Poetry London Tiffany Atkinson has lived in Wales for many years, where she is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University. She won the National Poetry Competition in 2000 and the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition in 2001. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. She will be judging the 2011 Cardiff International Poetry Competition, alongside fellow poets Don Paterson and Philip Gross. Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852248-88-8 | 216x138mm | 64pp | October 2011
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Glass Characters Bob Beagrie
Strange Horses Olivia Byard
New collection from prolific Middlesbrough poet and educator.
Shortlisted for Forward Prize for Best First Collection for From a Benediction.
Glass Characters is a collection of poems in three interlinked sequences: ‘Cameos’, ‘Road Trip’ and ‘Slapstick’. Each explores an eclectic array of marginal characters through ordinary, unusual and sometimes extreme situations: from wedding receptions, building sites and supermarkets to film sets, refugee centres and care homes for the elderly – uncovering their vulnerabilities, motivations and secret histories.
In Strange Horses, Olivia Byard creates visceral poetry that challenges all efforts to silence us. In a vast and eclectic journey she takes us as far back as the Bible, medieval times and Shakespeare, through to Keats, Eliot, Auden and Larkin, referencing self-harm and spirituality, Agincourt and Greenham Common, nursery rhymes and Gay Pride. Engaging with both British and Canadian landscapes, her poems spotlight life lived vividly, where respite and joys are hard won by courage, grim defiance and self-awareness.
Many of the poems operate as mini social documentaries and genre-style short films, building up a fractured view of the many peripheral lives that surround our own. Bob Beagrie is a poet, educational playwright and senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University. His recent publications include Yoik (Cinnamon, 2006) and The Seer Sung Husband (Smokestack, 2010). His work has also appeared in various anthologies and journals including The Forward Book of Poetry 2009. His poetry has been translated into Urdu, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish and Swedish and he has appeared at festivals and venues all over the world.
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-52-2 | 216x138mm | 72pp | October 2011
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“Olivia Byard’s new book shows the same virtues that gained From a Benediction such acclaim. These are cleareyed poems of precision and clarity. They restore your faith in the power of poetry to help and to console.” Bernard O’Donoghue “Olivia Byard is a real poet.” Alastair Fowler Olivia Byard’s first collection, From a Benediction, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection (Peterloo, 1997). She was born in Newport and grew up on the Cotswolds and in Montreal, Canada. She now lives in Oxfordshire and works as a part-time Creative Writing tutor for the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education where she began, and still teaches, poetry workshops. Flambard Press | Paperback | £8.00 978-1-906601-32-4 | 216x138mm | 72pp | October 2011
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First Poems George Campbell
The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman Loretta Collins Klobah
A key founder of modern Caribbean poetry, whose work has been largely unavailable for the past 25 years.
One of the eight poets featured in the Carcanet anthology New Caribbean Poetry.
When they first began to appear in the 1930s, George Campbell’s poems blasted through the colonial Victorianism of contemporary Jamaican poetry. Dubbed ‘the poet of the revolution’ by Jamaica’s founding political father, Norman Manley, Campbell was the one Caribbean poet whom Derek Walcott acknowledged as an inspiration. Campbell wrote about the struggle for independence and the appalling social conditions that drove the Jamaican masses to revolt, and about the rising consciousness of black Jamaicans after centuries of oppression. He wrote out of a consciousness of history and religious faith, a faith in which, for him, Jesus and Lenin were not incompatible icons. He also wrote about love, its ecstasies and bitter disappointments, and some of his very best poems are luminous celebrations of Jamaica’s natural beauty. George Campbell was born of Jamaican parents in Panama in 1916. First Poems appeared in 1945. In the same year, Campbell migrated to New York, where he worked in theatre and dance. In 1978, he returned to Jamaica, working as a consultant to the Institute of Jamaica and the People’s National Party archives. In 1994 he returned to New York, where he died in 2002.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845231-49-1 | 206x135mm | 168pp | October 2011
Loretta Collins Klobah sends us a twelve-foot woman with red neon surging through her veins, who boldly and gracefully takes on the challenges of urban life. Keen observer and witness, our warner woman turns her electric gaze to the everyday world and its extraordinary people. Against a soundtrack of world music, from salsa to reggae to jazz, and in a vibrant blend of English, Spanish and patois, she delivers by turns tender and incendiary hymns of homage to the Caribbean, American and British metropolis. Nature and the spirit-world pervade the city, offering green-hearted hope for the future. Loretta Collins Klobah lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she is a Professor of Caribbean Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Puerto Rico. She was one of eight poets featured in the anthology New Caribbean Poetry, edited by Kei Miller (Carcanet, 2007), and her poetry was also anthologised in the 1996 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her poetry and scholarly essays have been published widely in the Caribbean, the UK and the US.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-845231-84-2 | 206x135mm | 102pp | October 2011
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The Dialect of the Tribe edited by David and Helen Constantine Latest issue of Modern Poetry in Translation; features Philip Gross writing on his father’s aphasia. The latest issue of Modern Poetry in Translation takes as its theme the so-called ‘minority’ languages and cultures of our modern, globalised world. It explores a wide variety of viewpoints – translated poems, brief essays, anecdotes, photographs – and a wide range of issues: causes for lament, anger and revolt, but also for celebration, worldwide and perennial. At the heart of the matter lies the struggle for what John Clare called ‘self-identity’, a chief factor in which is language, one’s own peculiar tongue and the dialect of the tribe. ‘On a calm day the gaps, the audible’ by Philip Gross: On a calm day the gaps, the audible ellipses, become la-la-la-la-la— the way that most tongues sing along when we don’t have the words. I know this in my scant Estonian: that laul, is song. John, stay in those days, not the flurries of hard consonants, the ka-, the ga-. that come with finger-stabbing and a hunted look. Lully, lulla... I wish you the Coventry Carol, comfort on the edge of any language, its lully, lulla, lullay Modern Poetry in Translation | Paperback | £9.95 978-0-955906-48-0 | 201x140mm | 200pp | October 2011
Wheels Kwame Dawes The Caribbean’s leading poet, with a global profile.
Using the power of language to explore and discover patterns of meaning, this stunning and ambitious collection brings the lyric poem face to face with the external world, with its politics, social upheavals and ideological complexity. Whether it is a poem about a near victim of the Lockerbie bombing reflecting on the nature of grace, a president considering the function of art, or a Rastafarian defending his faith, the selections all seek illumination and understanding in the world. Using images from Garcia Marquez’s novels, accounts of slave rebellions, passages from the Book of Ezekiel, the art of modernist painters and wall-to-wall news coverage, Dawes creates a striking series of poems that are about finding pathways of meaning, and the quest for love and faith. Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 but grew up in Jamaica. He is widely acknowledged as the foremost Caribbean poet of the post-Walcott generation. A poet, actor, editor, critic, musician and professor of English, he is the author of 17 books. Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845231-42-2 | 206x135mm | 128pp | October 2011
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As Though We Were Flying Andrew Greig
Travelling Like Eggs Kathleen Kenny
Eighth collection from one of the leading Scottish writers of his generation.
Third Red Squirrel collection from popular Newcastle poet.
Celebratory or elegiac, whether set in Orkney, Spain, coastal Fife or Edinburgh, Andrew Greig’s poems are acts of attention, when the mind wakes up and the world snaps into focus.
These poems form a series of life journeys that see the poet adventuring and meandering through time, space and experience. Often with wide-eyed bemusement and incredulity, Kathleen Kenny marvels at human frailties, resilience, and oddness – exploring her world with both curiosity and wonder.
“Andrew Greig is a Scottish poet of sensitivity and resilience. He deals with high-risk situations... and is particularly good at presenting the gamut of feelings involved in rites of passage: high endeavour, commitment, holding back, drift, release.” Edwin Morgan “When I first read the poems, I started writing down the ones I was really impressed by, but I gave that up after I’d written down 4 of the first 5.” Norman MacCaig
Kathleen Kenny is the daughter of an Irish mother and an Irish-Geordie father. Her poetry collections include Keening with Spittal Tongues (2009) and Firesprung (2008), both published by Red Squirrel Press, and Hole (Smokestack, 2009). She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, where she is currently putting the final touches to her first novel, The Dolcie. She works part-time as a Creative Writing tutor for Age UK, WEA, and Sunderland University.
Andrew Greig has published eight collections of poetry, mostly with Bloodaxe, including The Order of the Day (1997; a Poetry Book Society Choice) and This Life, This Life: New & Selected Poems (2006). His six novels include That Summer (Faber, 2000), The Return of John Macnab (Headline, 1996) and its late sequel Romanno Bridge (Quercus, 2008), and In Another Light (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. He is also especially well-known for his non-fiction titles Preferred Lies (Phoenix, 2007) and At the Loch of the Green Corrie (Quercus, 2011). He lives in Edinburgh and Orkney, with his wife, novelist Lesley Glaister. Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852249-16-8 | 216x138mm | 64pp | October 2011
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-48-5 | 216x138mm | 72pp | October 2011
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Mustard Tart as Lemon Ira Lightman “We love people who like to experiment, and by extension then, we love Ira Lightman” – Ian McMillan. Like John Donne and Geoffrey Hill, Ira Lightman is very concerned with the humour of mishearing language, with wonderment, and logic taken to extremes. One poem examines how two sentences can be used as two propositions in a syllogism or a quadratic equation, and then tries to resolve them with a perverse logic. Another takes the phrase ‘mustard tart as lemon’ and explores whether mustard is tart, and lemon is tart, so they might be interchangeable and one might go to a bakery and be served a mustard tart instead of a lemon one. “A restless spirit, who likes to play with definitions of what writing and performance can be…” Ian McMillan Ira Lightman is a conceptual poet, as surreal as Vic n’ Bob, according to Kate Fox. He regularly appears on Radio 3’s The Verb with Ian McMillan. He makes award-winning public art throughout the North East – including bringing a Hollywood-style sign to Spennymoor, County Durham – and lately in Willenhall in the West Midlands. His most recent poetry collection is Duetcetera, published by Shearsman in 2008.
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-46-1 | 216x138mm | 72pp | October 2011
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The Face of Water: New & Selected Poems Shara McCallum “This is a marvellous collection filled with a lovely and evocative music. Highly recommended” – Library Review. Since the publication of her first collection, The Water Between Us, Shara McCallum has steadily created a rich body of poems. Her work has explored what it means to emerge from childhood in a Rastafarian home filled with reckless idealism and enter a new world of American landscapes and values. The Face of Water collects some of her best poems, poems that establish her as a poet of deft craft, and craftiness. She manages in these poems to enact the grand alchemy of the best poems – the art of transforming the most painful and sometimes mundane details of life into works of terrible and satisfying beauty. Shara McCallum hails from Kingston, Jamaica. She is the author of three collections of poetry: This Strange Land (2011), Song of Thieves (2003) and The Water Between Us (1999), winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Her poems have been several times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and in 2011 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. She teaches and directs the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845231-86-6 | 206x135mm | 140pp | October 2011
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Mommy Daddy Evan Sage Eric McHenry and Nicholas Garland Special edition of light verse for children by winner of 2010 Theodore Roethke Prize, illustrated by famed political cartoonist. If you see a vulture, don’t play dead. Childhood can be a confusing time, but not to Evan and Sage. They’ve got the world pretty well figured out, and are happy to explain it to their perplexed parents: “A monkey and an ape are not the same,” / said Sage. “The monkey has a longer name.” In this book of funny, fanciful poems and woodcuts, Eric McHenry and Nicholas Garland pay tender tribute to parents and the children who run circles around them. Eric McHenry grew up in Kansas. He is the author of Potscrubber Lullabies (Waywiser, 2006), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He received the Theodore Roethke Prize in 2010. His poems have featured in the Guardian, and his articles in the New York Times Book Review and Slate, among others. Nicholas Garland was born in London and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1966 he became the Daily Telegraph’s first political cartoonist. He has also contributed cartoons and covers to the New Statesman, the Spectator, Private Eye and the Independent. In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire. His son is the novelist Alex Garland.
Waywiser Press | Hardback | £8.99 978-1-904130-45-1 | 202x152mm | 72pp | October 2011
This Line is Not for Turning: An Anthology of Contemporary British Prose Poetry edited by Jane Monson Includes poems by George Szirtes, Pascale Petit and Richard Gwyn. This anthology of contemporary British prose poetry is the first of its kind in the UK. It celebrates prose poetry being written by writers such as George Szirtes, Pascale Petit, Carrie Etter, Luke Kennard, Andy Brown, Anthony Rudolf, Richard Gwyn, Linda Black and Kate North, as well as a range of new voices. Closer to short prose in their economical use of storytelling, but expertly using the sounds, tones, twists and rhythms of poetry, these pieces exemplify the craftwork involved in the form. “These prose poems are compelling in their elegance, their swift and subtle movements, their embodiment of serious play. In this ‘borderline’ form, life’s accepted compartments are thrillingly broken down.” Moniza Alvi Jane Monson has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA and a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University. Now based in Cambridge, she works as a freelance writer and teacher and runs independent Creative Writing courses in Cambridge, London and abroad. She has been shortlisted for an Eric Gregory Award and commended by Poetry London and the New Writing Partnership. Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-907090-51-6 | 216x140mm | 128pp | October 2011
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Grace Esther Morgan
Breaking Silence Jacob Sam-La Rose
“Poems of outstanding beauty” – John Burnside.
“A one-man literary industry” – Patrick Neate, BBC Poetry Season.
What happens if, when the angel arrives with his message, no one’s at home? In poems of lyric concentration, Grace examines our need for purpose, for the signs that might help us decide what to do with our lives. These are poems of intensely felt moments – they create a vision both troubled and informed by doubt, where the ghost of a film star may be the closest we can come to grace.
Already well-known on the UK performance circuit, Jacob Sam-La Rose has also spent many years working with young people in schools and communities, especially around London. Breaking Silence is his first book-length collection of poetry – a collection that sits on the threshold between the personal and the profound, with eyes on race and dual heritage; masculinity and manhood; definitions and senses of self.
“Poems of outstanding beauty and a decidedly celebratory wisdom that takes nothing for granted. This is poetry of the first order by a poet who really knows how to sing.” John Burnside
“Passionate about poetry and its power to change people’s lives, he’s a lesson to us all. He’s also a damn fine writer.” Patrick Neate
“Esther Morgan’s poems are full of hints and mysteries. They dance on sensuous feet while keeping a troubled eye on the music that keeps them dancing.” George Szirtes
“Poetry that is… fresh, vivid and masterly in its evocation of contemporary Britain.” Choman Hardi and Martyn Crucefix, Poetry Book Society Bulletin (on Communion)
Esther Morgan was born in Kidderminster. She has taught at UEA, and is currently Historic Recordings Manager for the Poetry Archive. Her two previous Bloodaxe collections are Beyond Calling Distance (2001), winner of the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and The Silence Living in Houses (2005). She won the Bridport Prize in 2010 with her poem ‘This Morning’, which appears in this collection. She lives in Norfolk.
Jacob Sam-La Rose was born in London in 1976. He was managing director of a web development studio before becoming a freelance writer and editor. He is the Artistic Director of the London Teenage Poetry SLAM, and an editor for Flipped Eye Press. His work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, 2010), Poems for Love (Penguin, 2010), Red: Contemporary Black British Poetry (Peepal Tree, 2010) and Michael Rosen’s A-Z: The Best Children’s Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah (Puffin, 2009). His pamphlet Communion was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2006.
Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852249-18-2 | 216x138mm | 64pp | October 2011
Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852249-15-1 | 216x138mm | 64pp | October 2011
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Cat Jeoffry Christopher Smart Beautifully illustrated edition of one of the most famous pieces of poetry ever written about a cat. For he is of the tribe of Tiger. Cat Jeoffry is a self-contained passage from Christopher Smart’s much longer work Jubilate Agno (Rejoice in the Lamb), and one of the most famous pieces of poetry ever written about a cat. This new edition retains the original Peter Hay illustrations, using his rubber stamps and linocuts, and adds Tom Woodman’s informative commentary to place Cat Jeoffry in the context of Smart’s life and works. Christopher Smart (1722-1771) was born in Shipbourne, Kent. A Cambridge graduate, he spent over ten years of his life in mental institutions, suffering from a form of religious hysteria. In 1936 W.B. Yeats singled out Smart’s A Song to David in the introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse as the inaugural poem of the Romantic period; Dante Gabriel Rossetti pronounced it “the only accomplished poem of the last century”. Since then, his Jubilate Agno has captured the interest of many modern poets including Allen Ginsberg, Alec Hope, John Heath-Stubbs, Peter Porter, Jeremy Reed and Wendy Cope. Two Rivers Press | Paperback | £7.95 978-1-901677-74-4 | 216x138mm | 48pp | October 2011
Anterooms: Poems & Translations Richard Wilbur New collection from one of America’s greatest living poets, twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize. “For 60 years, Richard Wilbur has remained in the front rank of contemporary poets, always present, patiently defying trends, a lucid thinker whose poems stick in the mind and whose virtuosity never ceases to astonish and gratify his readers... Wilbur has never wavered as an artist…” Jay Parini, The Guardian “He asks us to see a poem not as a sum of distinguishable parts, but as a smooth, silvery whole. Even his shadows are meticulously blended.” The New York Times Book Review “A new collection by our greatest living poet is cause for wonder and gratitude... Anterooms bursts with a ripened and rueful joy. This is a book not just for your shelves but for the ages.” J. D. McClatchy, Yale Review Richard Wilbur was born in New York in 1921. The second US Poet Laureate (1987-88), his accolades include the Pulitzer Prize (twice, in 1957 and 1989) and the National Book Award. His poetry collections include The Beautiful Changes (1947), Things of This World (1956) and New and Collected Poems (1988). His Collected Poems: 1943-2004 was published by Waywiser in 2005. Waywiser Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-904130-44-4 | 216x138mm | 72pp | October 2011
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The Ballad of Reading Gaol Oscar Wilde
A Story I Am In: Selected Poems James Berry
New illustrated edition of Wilde’s famous poem about his time in prison.
Major retrospective of one of Britain’s bestknown Caribbean poets.
In May of 1895, the century’s most dazzling man of letters was sentenced to two years with hard labour for ‘acts of gross indecency with another male person’. On his release he moved to France, where he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol: an anguished plea for prison reform, and a passionate expression of sympathy for his fellow prisoners, those ‘souls in pain’.
A Story I Am In is the crowning achievement of a muchcelebrated writer now in his late 80s. A Story I Am In is not just James Berry’s life in poetry but a book of all the lives he has witnessed or been part of – a story of life itself.
Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol was a success from its first publication, and to this day some of its lines are among the most famous in the English language. In this powerfully illustrated edition, Two Rivers Press presents Wilde’s Ballad with a newly-commissioned introduction, which draws on unpublished material in the prison archives.
Coming to Britain in 1948, in the first post-war wave of Jamaican emigration, James Berry later became one of the first black writers in Britain to achieve wider recognition. His experiences gave him a strong and particularly Caribbean awareness of language, one which has nourished his poetry over many years. He himself observed that West Indian poetry “has something to say and there is a compulsive beauty about the way it is being said”. It is this compulsive beauty that Berry’s poetry communicates so strongly. James Berry was born and brought up in a tiny seaside village in Jamaica. He first rose to prominence in the UK in 1981 when he won the National Poetry Competition. His many books include two seminal anthologies of Caribbean poetry, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (1984), six collections of poetry – most recently Hot Earth Cold Earth (1995) and Windrush Songs (2007) from Bloodaxe. He has won many literary prizes, including the Signal Poetry Award (1989) and a Cholmondeley Award (1991). He was awarded the OBE in 1990. He lives in London.
Two Rivers Press | Paperback | £7.95 978-1-901677-75-1 | 216x138mm | 64pp | October 2011
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Bloodaxe | Paperback | £10.95 978-1-852249-17-5 | 216x138mm | 192pp | November 2011
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Shine On: New Irish Writing edited by Pat Boran
Dark and Unaccustomed Words Vahni Capildeo
Contributions from leading Irish writers including Colm Tóibín and Dennis O’Driscoll.
New collection from Forward Prize Highly Commended poet.
Shine On is a major anthology of new Irish poetry and prose, in support of the Irish mental health charity Shine. Edited and with an introduction by Pat Boran, the anthology offers a fascinating snapshot of the wealth and diversity of Irish writing today. Contributors include John Montague, Brendan Kennelly, Eilean Ní Chuilleanáin, Colm Tóibín, Kevin Barry, Alex Barclay, Colum McCann, Claire Keegan, Paula Meehan, Macdara Woods, Paul Durcan, Sinead Morrissey, Rita Ann Higgins, Harry Clifton, Dennis O’Driscoll, and many more.
Dark and Unaccustomed Words is the most lyrical and playful part of Vahni Capildeo’s three-part project exploring the boundaries of the human and the natural, and the oceanic or musical possibilities of poetic form. It completes the free-flowing triptych begun with Person Animal Figure (2005), a shape-shifting dramatic monologue, and continued in Undraining Sea (Egg Box, 2009), which featured her Forward Prize Highly Commended poem ‘From first to last...’.
Pat Boran was born in Portlaoise, Ireland in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin. He has published four collections of poetry, including his New and Selected Poems (Dedalus, 2005). His most recent title is his memoir The Invisible Prison: Scenes from an Irish Childhood (Dedalus, 2009). A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and presenter of The Poetry Programme on RTÉ Radio 1, he has also edited Wingspan: A Dedalus Sampler (2006) and Flowing, Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry (Dedalus, 2009). In 2007 he was elected to the membership of Aosdána.
Vahni Capildeo was born in Trinidad in 1973, and has lived in the UK since 1991. After a Research Fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge, her sense of the living language was deepened forever by her time in the offices of the Oxford English Dictionary. She is currently a Contributing Editor of the Caribbean Review of Books. She is glad of an enduring connection with the North of England, following stints at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds. Her poetry and prose have been widely anthologised, most recently in Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, 2010), In the Telling (Cinnamon, 2009), Trinidad Noir (Akashic, 2008), Ian Sinclair’s London: City of Disappearances (Penguin, 2007) and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (OUP, 2005).
Dedalus Press | Paperback | £13.99 978-1-906614-46-1 | 216x140mm | 304pp | November 2011
Egg Box Publishing | Paperback | £12.99 978-0-956928-91-7 | 198x129mm | 120pp | November 2011
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A Bloom of Stones: A Trilingual Anthology of Haitian Poems after the Earthquake edited by Kwame Dawes Collects work of over 30 Haitian poets in response to last year’s disaster. On January 12, 2010, at about 5pm, an earthquake broke apart the city of Port au Prince and stretches of the Haitian landscape, killing almost 300,000 people, injuring 200,000 more and leaving 1.2 million people homeless. Poet Kwame Dawes, during his four trips to Haiti over the ten months that followed, put out a call to Haitian poets for poems in response to the earthquake. Here are poems about the rupture of love, the shock of sudden disaster, the hunger for more beauty in the world, the shattering of landscapes, and ultimately, poems that explore the incomprehensible nature of our mortality. Presenting French and Haitian Creole poems alongside their English translations, this trilingual anthology is a necessary bridge across the languages of the Caribbean, and introduces readers to some exciting Haitian voices. Kwame Dawes is widely acknowledged as the foremost Caribbean poet of the post-Walcott generation. He recently won an Emmy for his contribution to www.LiveHopeLove.com, a multimedia website on the human face of HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. His 2009 poetry collection Hope’s Hospice, also published by Peepal Tree, was inspired by the project. Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £19.99 978-1-845231-92-7 | 206x135mm | 340pp | November 2011
Fugue and Other Writings Neville Dawes Collection of poetry, short stories, autobiography and criticism, introduced by his son Kwame Dawes. This collection of work by the late Neville Dawes (1926-1984) gives unrivalled access to his thoughts on a rural Jamaican childhood, his exposure to Oxbridge modernism, his involvement in nationalist ferment, and the frustrations of postcolonial politics. The book makes available the fine poems that Dawes wrote, mostly between 1950 and 1970, both as the young man in London exploring a modernist voice and as the ideologically-committed poet returning to his roots. Fugue also includes the celebrated short stories broadcast on the BBC’s Caribbean Voices programme, along with pieces of insightful and humorous autobiography and a section devoted to his critical writing. A long introductory essay by Kwame Dawes brings both a scholar’s studied contextualisation and a son’s moving insight. Neville Dawes was born in Nigeria in 1926, but grew up in rural Jamaica. He studied for an MA at Oxford, taught in Jamaica, Ghana and Guyana, and was later appointed Director of the Institute of Jamaica. He wrote two novels, The Last Enchantment, reissued by Peepal Tree in 2009, and Interim. Always a Marxist, he was deeply immersed in Africa and his nationalist identification with the rural Jamaican working class. Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845231-09-5 | 206x135mm | 230pp | November 2011
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His Hands Were Gentle: Selected Lyrics of Víctor Jara edited by Martín Espada First ever bilingual edition of legendary Chilean songwriter. His Hands Were Gentle brings together, for the first time in both Spanish and English, the best of Víctor Jara’s lyrics, from early songs like ‘El arado’ (‘The Plow’) to ‘Estadio Chile’ (‘In the Stadium’), written in the hours before his execution. They reveal Jara as an ardent political poet, an eloquent advocate for the peasantry from which he arose, a socialist visionary and a poetic balladeer of the highest order. Víctor Jara (1932-73) was a legendary Chilean singer, songwriter, guitarist and theatre director. Between 1966 and 1973 he released eight albums, such as Canto libre (Free Song) and El derecho de vivir en paz (The Right to Live in Peace). He was a member of the Communist Party of Chile, a prominent supporter of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government, and a leader of the New Song Movement during the cultural renaissance of the Allende years. In the days following the US-backed military coup of September 1973, Jara was arrested, imprisoned and murdered. His recordings were banned for many years in Chile. Martín Espada has published more than fifteen books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator, including the poetry collection Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas (Smokestack, 2008). Smokestack | Paperback | £8.95 978-0-956814-41-8 | 197x127mm | 174pp | November 2011
Full Scottish Breakfast Graham Fulton New collection from long-established presence on the Scottish literary scene. Full Scottish Breakfast is a headlong journey from space age innocence through to cynicism and eventually into bemused middle age, taking in frantic and funny encounters with mad teachers, wrecked cars, heroes, villains, painters, sheep, Chihuahuas and dead relatives along the way, in an attempt to make sense of whatever led there in the first place. Graham Fulton was born in 1959 in Scotland. He began writing and performing poetry in 1987 when he first attended poet Tom Leonard’s writers’ group in Paisley. He was joint winner of the Scotia Bar First of May Poetry Prize, and was an editorial board member of the West Coast Magazine, which featured up-and-coming writers such as Irvine Welsh. His poetry has been published in the likes of The Rialto, Other Poetry, Poetry Scotland and The North, as well as in the anthologies Scotlands (Carcanet, 2004) and Scottish Poems (Macmillan, 2007). His previous collections include Humouring the Iron Bar Man, This, Knights of the Lower Floors, Ritual Soup and Other Liquids and Inner Circle; and his more recent publications include Pocket Fugues (2009), Black Motel / The Man who Forgot How to (2010) and Open Plan (Smokestack, 2011).
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-51-5 | 216x138mm | 80pp | November 2011
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Surfacing Steve Griffiths
Deep Field Philip Gross
Championed by T.S. Eliot Prize winner Philip Gross.
Winner of 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize for previous Bloodaxe collection, The Water Table, which sold over 5,000 copies.
“A varied but coherent collection by a subtle and deeply intelligent writer who can address human concerns like the intimate recall of childhood or the challenges of middle age without sentimentality; he can move between abstract thought and concrete particularities with such ease that sometimes the join is invisible. This is mature writing, picking its way through the layers and ‘surfaces’ of an experience, suddenly clarified into a single lucid image. Steve Griffiths’ writing voice is assured but not predictable.” Philip Gross Steve Griffiths was born in Treardurr Bay, Anglesey in 1949. He has published five collections of poems since 1980, and his Selected Poems was published by Seren in 1993. In 2008 Cinnamon Press published An Elusive State: Entering al-Chwm, a cycle of poems about the life and death of an imaginary utopia, which was broadcast on Radio 3. His work has also featured in Poetry Wales and The London Magazine.
Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-907090-52-3 | 216x140mm | 80pp | November 2011
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In his nineties Philip Gross’s father, a wartime refugee, began to lose his several languages, first to deafness, then profound aphasia. These poems reach into that gulf to find him – through the recovery of histories both spoken and unspoken, as well as an excavation of the spoken word itself. “A book of great clarity and concentration... this is a mature and determined book, dream-like in places, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence.” Simon Armitage, T.S. Eliot Prize judges’ comment on The Water Table “Haunting, vividly imagined poems, whose fierce intelligence is gentled by the sonorous grace of the language… A considerable poetic talent offers us an elegant and subtle re-evaluation of the modern world.” Sarah Crown, The Guardian Philip Gross is Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University. He has published seven books with Bloodaxe, including The Water Table (2009), The Egg of Zero (2006), Mappa Mundi (2003) and Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001). His book I Spy Pinhole Eye (Cinnamon Press, 2009), a collaborative work with photographer Simon Denison, won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2010. Born in Cornwall, Philip Gross lived in Bristol and Bath for many years, and now lives in Penarth. Bloodaxe | Paperback | £8.95 978-1-852249-19-9 | 216x138mm | 64pp | November 2011
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The Hecht Prize Anthology 2005-2009 edited by Joseph Harrison
The Amber Shell of Self and other poems Mahmud Kianush
Anthology of finalists for Waywiser’s transatlantic Poetry Prize.
Second collection in English by remarkable Iranian poet.
The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize was launched by Waywiser in 2005, and is awarded annually to the best first or second collection of original poems submitted in English. The winner receives a purse of £1,750, and his or her collection is published on both sides of the Atlantic. The prize has gone from strength to strength during its first five years, helped by a highly distinguished list of final judges: J.D. McClatchy, Mary Jo Salter, Richard Wilbur, Alan Shapiro and Rosanna Warren.
In Mahmud Kianush’s eyes, poetry lies at the very heart of human communication. He believes that the first human beings began to understand themselves, the world around them and the mysteries of the universe by their poetical interpretations of everything they saw and felt, and this is what real poets have always done and will always do. He agrees with the ancient idea that ‘man is a political animal’, but he adds that man must remain faithful to his primordial nature and first be a poet.
The Hecht Prize Anthology, 2005-2009 contains work by fifty of the poets who reached the contest’s semi-finals, including the five eventual winners, Morri Creech, Erica Dawson, Rose Kelleher, Carrie Jerrell and Matthew Ladd.
The Amber Shell of Self is the second Rockingham Press collection written in English by this remarkable Iranian poet, following Of Birds and Men: Poems from a Persian Divan (2004).
Joseph Harrison is Waywiser’s Senior American Editor. His book Someone Else’s Name (Waywiser, 2003) was named as one of five poetry books of the year by the Washington Post. His second book of poems, Identity Theft, was published by Waywiser in 2008. In 2005 he was the recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Baltimore.
Mahmud Kianush took early retirement from the Iranian civil service in 1974, and two years later moved to London with his wife and children. In Iran, he has published fourteen books of poems, five collections of short stories and six books of literary criticism. He is also the translator of many well-known authors into Persian, including D.H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett and John Steinbeck. He edited and translated the anthology Modern Persian Poetry (Rockingham Press, 1996).
Waywiser Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-904130-46-8 | 197x129mm | 300pp | November 2011
Rockingham Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-904851-42-4 | 210x140mm | 128pp | November 2011
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New & Collected Poems Lotte Kramer
The Uncertainty Principle Mark Kraushaar
Comprehensive Collected from renowned ‘Holocaust poet’.
Winner of the 2010 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, judged by James Fenton.
Lotte Kramer has been described as a ‘Holocaust poet’, and it is true that she writes feelingly about the family and friends she left behind when she came to Britain in 1939 in the Kindertransport. But her canvas is much broader: she writes about the landscapes of modern Europe, about the Fen Country where she now lives, and about paintings and literature. This New & Collected Poems contains all her translations as well as her own poetry from fourteen collections, most recently Turning the Key (Rockingham Press, 2009).
Mark Kraushaar’s new collection represents a tentative, awkward, often funny though frequently heart-breaking struggle to find a path to meaning in the world.
“Her poems appear simple, but their lucidity is that of deep, unmuddied waters.” Anne Stevenson “The core of Kramer’s work could genuinely be described as Holocaust poetry, a silent watercolour Kaddish, one made in England out of such post-war materials as were available at the time.” George Szirtes Lotte Kramer was fifteen years old when, in July 1939, she escaped her hometown of Mainz in Germany on one of the last Kindertransport trains. Her poems have been translated and published in Germany and Japan, and she herself is a notable translator of German poems, particularly Rilke.
Rockingham Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-904851-43-1 | 210x140mm | 400pp | November 2011
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“A repertoire of good stories, and something of the visionary.” Marilyn Nelson “Generally triggered by something as deceptively simple as a small newspaper item, an overheard remark, or an incident observed in a bus station, Mark Kraushaar’s meditative/narrative poems illuminate moments of surreal reality by telling little stories of heartbreakingly human intent.” Peter Stitt, The Gettysburg Review Mark Kraushaar was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Concord, Massachusetts. He has worked as a high school English teacher, a taxi driver and a shipyard welder on the Mississippi. He then moved to Wisconsin, where he has worked as a nurse since the mid-1980s. His poems have been anthologised in Best American Poetry (2006) and Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman (2003). His debut collection, Falling Brick Kills Local Man, was published in 2009 as winner of the Felix Pollak Prize, and was also a finalist for the May Swenson Prize, the Juniper Prize and the Walt Whitman Award. Waywiser Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-904130-50-5 | 197x129mm | 96pp | November 2011
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Unsweet Dreams: Poems of laughter, wit and sex Anne Le Marquand Hartigan “… eloquent, buoyant, independent, cheeky and... refreshingly original” – Brendan Kennelly. Unsweet Dreams deals with the profound things that happen in our lives, with the reaffirming wisdom that humour is the best gift we have to navigate our way. These poems give us something of what we need now more than ever: joy and lightness, delivered with sharpness and bite. Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is a poet, playwright and painter. She has published six collections of poetry, including To Keep The Light Burning: Reflections in Times of Loss (Salmon, 2008), Nourishment (Salmon, 2005) and Now is a Moveable Feast (Salmon, 1991). Her prose work includes Clearing the Space: A Way of Writing (Salmon, 1996). As a dramatist, Hartigan won the Mobil Prize for Playwriting for her play The Secret Game in 1995, and In Other Worlds (2003) was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Ohio University and the Otago Festival of the Arts in Dunedin, New Zealand. Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-86-4 | 210x134mm | 78pp | November 2011
Rememberer Ágnes Lehóczky Second collection in English from prize-winning Hungarian poet.
Ágnes Lehóczky’s second collection consists of five sequences of prose poems exploring memory, place and the death of a language. The poems are playful, intelligent and built in words that pulsate with energetic reference and invention. Together they consider how one deals with recollections encountered in a new language, and how this process can turn against itself; how the mind becomes a twisting scroll of texture, geography and ideas of home. This is fiercely relevant poetry, with much to say about how we encounter our worlds. “It is rare to find such articulate poems... an original writer with something original to say.” George Szirtes Ágnes Lehóczky is a Hungarian-born poet and translator. She has two short poetry collections in Hungarian, Station X (2000) and Medallion (2002), published by Universitas, Hungary. Her first full collection, Budapest to Babel, was published by Egg Box in 2008. She was the winner of the Daniil Pashkoff Prize 2010 in poetry and the inaugural winner of the Jane Martin Prize for Poetry at Girton College, Cambridge, in 2011. She currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Sheffield. Egg Box Publishing | Paperback | £12.99 978-0-956928-90-0 | 198x129mm | 120pp | November 2011
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Walking Here Jessie Lendennie
AGOG Pete Marshall
New collection from the co-founder of Salmon Poetry.
New collection from poet now based in the Conwy Valley, North Wales.
As in Jessie Lendennie’s previous collection, Daughter and Other Poems, the poems in Walking Here are connected in perception and spirit. Like any art that means anything, these poems arise out of pain, honouring it, paying tribute. The pain that comes with knowledge of the truth of the world; its loss, its discovery; shades, shadows and light.
Pete Marshall’s poetry is wry, witty and playful, yet always pushing at the boundaries of formal and free verse. Stylistically fresh and engaging, the poems often come accompanied by local images and found material, only enhancing their literary and artistic impact, and reflecting a deep rootedness in the landscape and mythology of North Wales. This passion for place comes through in densely layered verse, not averse to social and cultural commentary, often with a critical edge. In its combination of the lyrical and the colloquial, of formal innovation and an outwardlooking, thought-provoking narrative, AGOG brings together a very original perspective on the valleys of home.
Jessie Lendennie is the co-founder and Managing Director of Salmon Poetry. Born in Arkansas, after years of travel she settled in Ireland in 1981. Her previous publications include a book-length prose poem, Daughter (1988), reprinted as Daughter and Other Poems in 2001. Her work has appeared widely in anthologies such as Irish Poetry Now: Other Voices (1993) and The White Page / An Bhileog Bhan: Twentieth-Century Irish Women Poets, edited by Joan McBreen (Salmon, 1999). She has compiled and edited Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, 1981-2007 (Salmon, 2006), Poetry: Reading it, Writing It, Publishing It (Salmon, 2009) and Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon, 2010). She is currently working on a memoir, To Dance Beneath the Diamond Sky.
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-84-0 | 210x134mm | 78pp | November 2011
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Pete Marshall was born in Liverpool in 1958. He has worked in many occupations, from soldier to social worker. His other collections include In Loco Parentis and The Vale, the latter written during a six-month writer’s sabbatical in the Vale of Glamorgan. Pete is married with three children and lives on a traditional Welsh smallholding in the Conwy Valley.
Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-907090-45-5 | 216x140mm | 80pp | November 2011
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Gods of Babel Judith Mok
Session Pete Mullineaux
“There is much to admire not least the lyrical writing...” – The Irish Times.
“Gorgeous and resonant with a stunning final blow” – Ailbhe Darcy.
Gods of Babel is the result of years of wandering through different countries and languages, and the first English collection by the Dutch author and singer Judith Mok. Music, Mok’s shared passion in life with literature, has encouraged her to write prose poems filled with explosiveness and extroversion, attuned to all the rhythms and melodies of the stage.
Session – the word used to describe informal gatherings featuring traditional Irish music – is Pete Mullineaux’s second collection with Salmon Poetry. At the age of 13, his poem ‘Harvest Festival’ appeared in the Macmillan anthology Poetry & Song, and this latest collection continues a lifetime fascination with the twin worlds of poetry and music: Pete also plays the guitar, mandolin and fiddle. Paying tribute to the ‘music’ in poets such as Heaney and Yeats along the way, this is an innovative, sometimes humorous, but ultimately thought-provoking collection.
“There is much to admire not least the lyrical writing, which at times creates a dreamlike atmosphere.” The Irish Times “Mok’s writing is excellent and on the tripod of arts that uphold this work – music, art and literature – she has flashes of brilliance, constructing her second tongue in a defamiliarised way without the clichés and lazy comforts of acquaintance....” The Dubliner Judith Mok was born in the Netherlands. She has published three novels and three books of poetry, as well as short stories. Gods of Babel is her first collection of poetry in English. Judith’s short stories have twice been shortlisted for the Francis McManus Award, and her first novel, The Innocents at the Circus, for the Prix de l’Académie Française. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally in literary magazines and anthologies. She is also a renowned soprano. Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-80-2 | 210x134mm | 78pp | November 2011
“Mullineaux is a profoundly sensitive poet, while some lines are so grimly funny I’m genuinely jealous I didn’t think of them first.” Kevin Higgins Pete Mullineaux is originally from Bristol. In London in the 1980s he was a noted performer on the poetry and music scenes, appearing at major events like Glastonbury and national CND protests alongside such luminaries as E.P. Thompson and The Pogues. Since 1991 he has settled in Galway. Published throughout Ireland, the UK, France and the US, his debut full collection, A Father’s Day, appeared from Salmon in 2008.
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-63-5 | 210x134mm | 78pp | November 2011
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Selected Poems Gig Ryan
Mad for Meat Kevin Simmonds
Debut UK collection from one of Australia’s leading poets.
Debut full collection from rising star of black American poetry and frequent collaborator with Kwame Dawes.
Gig Ryan’s edgy, excoriating poetry takes the pulse of urban Australia, but her territory is as much the human rat-race as the particular lives she seizes upon with icy, ironic precision. Her range of reference brings together heroes, heroines and put-upon mortals of both ancient and modern times: slaves and money-grabbers, pretenders and worshippers of ephemera and effluvia, for whom ‘I continue my existence as a negative role-model / bathing in the blood of others / sitting in a cone of noise.’ “Her monologues have a fragmentary quality, as if spoken in a post-Poundian landscape littered with broken statues.” Michael Hulse, Poetry Review “More the demotic of a dystopia than the vernacular of a republic, Ryan’s use of language – its truncation, tautness and drama – cuts equally across the body politic and the scene of poetry.” Michael Brennan, Poetry International Web Gig Ryan was born in 1956 and grew up in Melbourne. She has published six collections of poetry in Australia: The Division of Anger (1981); Manners of an Astronaut (1984); The Last Interior (1986); Excavation (1990); Pure and Applied (1998), which won the C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry; and Heroic Money (2001). She lives in Melbourne, and has been poetry editor of the Melbourne Age since 1998. Bloodaxe | Paperback | £9.95 978-1-852249-21-2 | 216x138mm | 160pp | November 2011
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Kevin Simmonds’s poems travel across his native United States and all over the world – from a Deep South spiritual’s lamentation, to gay men in a Bangkok sex club, to competitive hot-dog eating. With tender expansiveness that Jane Hirshfield says calls to mind “Whitman’s America’s future” and his “unquestionable sense of music” (Kwame Dawes), Simmonds readily casts an eye over what causes others consternation, shame and fear: be it abuse, racism, organised religion or sexual mutilation. In considering all our lives and circumstances, he meditates on the apple tree: ‘crouched down as if something brutal had happened / for the sweetness to come’. Kevin Simmonds is a poet and musician, born in Chicago. He trained as a classical singer but grew up in jazz, blues and gospel-drenched New Orleans, and his music has been performed throughout the US, the UK, the Caribbean and Japan. A frequent collaborator with Kwame Dawes, he has set several of his poems to music, including the children’s book I Saw Your Face and Hope, a meditation on HIV and AIDS in Jamaica commissioned by the Pulitzer Centre. His writing appears in the anthologies The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007) and Gathering Ground (2006). He now lives in San Francisco.
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-82-6 | 210x134mm | 78pp | November 2011
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Union: New & Selected Poems Paul Summers “Baudelaire in a Blyth Spartans shirt” – The Morning Star. Union brings together two decades’ worth of Paul Summers’ poems, drawing on books and pamphlets, performance pieces and collaborations, as well as a long and previously unpublished sequence about the North of England, ‘broken land’. Summers is a poet of place and travel, of exile and home, combining the domestic and the epic, the personal and the political, the rhetorical and the confessional. He is a Blyth Spartans fan, a proud Northumbrian internationalist and a fervent celebrator of the idea of ‘we’ – of community, people and hope – of the notion of union itself. “Chilling and often funny, driven by love and anger, a striking testament to northern life.” Sean O’Brien, The Northern Review Paul Summers was born in Blyth, Northumberland in 1967. He currently lives in Queensland, Australia. A founding editor of the magazines Billy Liar and Liar Republic, he has written extensively for TV, film, radio and theatre. His first full collection of poetry, The Last Bus, was published by Iron Press in 1998 to critical acclaim, and the title sequence was included in The Forward Book of Poetry in 1998. His other books include Cunawabi, The Rat’s Mirror, Beer & Skittles, Vermeer’s Dark Parlour, Big Bella’s Dirty Cafe, Dreams Days Break Portfolio (with photographer David Gray) and Three Men on the Metro (with Andy Croft and Bill Herbert; Five Leaves, 2009).
Smokestack | Paperback | £7.95 978-0-956417-59-6 | 197x127mm | 120pp | November 2011
Homesick for the Earth Jules Supervielle with versions by Moniza Alvi Jules Supervielle (1884-1960) was born to French Basque parents in Montevideo, orphaned within a year of his birth, and grew up in Uruguay and France. He spent the Second World War exiled in Uruguay, afflicted by ill health and financial ruin. His poems are dream-like, often gently fantastical, imbued with an appealing surface clarity, standing apart from much of 20th-century French poetry. In many respects he seems our contemporary, a writer of highly personal poems as well as poems concerned with war and the environment. “In her striking versions of poems by the French poet Jules Supervielle, written against the backdrop of wartime France, Moniza Alvi has found a soul-mate, a poet companion.” Penelope Shuttle, Poetry London Jules Supervielle was one of the leading French poets of the 20th century. Between 1922 and 1939 he published two books of poetry, Débarcadères and Gravitations, a novel and a collection of short stories. His post-war output included the poetry collections Naissances and Le Corps Tragique as well as plays and mythological tales. Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. After working for many years as a teacher in London, she is now a freelance writer and lives in Norfolk. Her latest books are Europa (Bloodaxe, 2008), a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the 2008 T.S. Eliot Prize, and Split World: Poems 1990-2005 (Bloodaxe, 2008).
Bloodaxe | Paperback | £9.95 978-1-852249-20-5 | 216x138mm | 112pp | November 2011
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Sailing Lake Mareotis Eamonn Wall
Sky Thick with Fireflies Ethna McKiernan
“... a poet capable of drawing the mind’s eye onward... to insight” – Fiona Sampson.
Second Salmon Poetry collection from Minnesotan author with Irish links.
Sailing Lake Mareotis, Eamonn Wall’s sixth collection to be published by Salmon Poetry, is both thematically and formally his most diverse and engaging work to date. In lyric poems, satires and flash fictions, Wall engages robustly and ironically with the contemporary American and Irish worlds. He explores the lives of individuals hidden from society’s gaze, forced to live on the margins. At the same time, Sailing Lake Mareotis displays Wall’s intense engagement with and celebration of the living space we all share, offering up tender lyric poems to family and the natural world.
Ethna McKiernan’s Sky Thick With Fireflies is laced and bound by memory. These poems hold the past to light and insist upon remembrance. Included are moving elegies for her father, for a friend’s son, for the dead of 9/11, for her own child lost to adoption, and for the homeless population with whom she works. Here also are poems of longing and romance and dry wit, plus imaginative persona poems in the voices of Rumpelstiltskin, Narcissus and Mrs Magi.
“His poems are charged with a thoroughly contemporary and a profoundly literary awareness of what it means to be Irish, and a writer in America.” Kathleen McCracken, Poetry Ireland Review
“McKiernan is a poet’s poet, assuming the poet believes emotion is the beating heart of literature.” The Corresponder “She stands out among the ranks of poets for her ability to match language to subject, sound to sense.” The Bloomsbury Review
Eamonn Wall, a native of Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, emigrated to the US in 1982, where he is currently Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of five other collections of poetry, most recently A Tour of Your Country (Salmon, 2008). His essays, articles and reviews of Irish and American writers have appeared in the Irish Times, the Irish Literary Supplement, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and many other journals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ethna McKiernan’s first book, Caravan (Dedalus Press, 1989) was a Minnesota Book Award Nominee. Her second, The One Who Swears You Can’t Start Over, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2002. She ran Irish Books and Media for over two decades and has worked for the past four years for a non-profit organisation serving the Minneapolis homeless.
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-85-7 | 210x134mm | 78pp | November 2011
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-88-8 | 210x134mm | 78pp | December 2011
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poet r y 77 Love Sonnets by Garrison Keillor Bloodaxe | Paperback 96pp | £12.00 978-1-852249-00-7
The Agister’s Experiment by Gill Learner Two Rivers | Paperback 64pp | £8.00 978-1-901677-71-3
The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass Bloodaxe | Paperback 368pp | £15.00 978-1-852248-97-0
Being Alive by Neil Astley (ed) Bloodaxe | Paperback 514pp | £10.95 978-1-852246-75-4
Being Human by Neil Astley (ed) Bloodaxe | Paperback 496pp | £12.00 978-1-852248-09-3
The Book of the Snow by François Jacqmin Arc | Hardback & Paperback 160pp | £13.99 / £10.99 978-1-906570-02-6 (hb) 978-1-904614-55-5 (pb)
Mary: A Novel in Verse Patricia Monaghan New collection exploring religious figure from Pushcart Prize-winning poet. In Mary: A Novel in Verse, Patricia Monaghan explores varying and sometimes contradictory stories told about the mother of Jesus, using them to express the human realities of hope, grief and compassion. Unwed mother, loving wife, hard-working householder, bereaved parent: this Mary is no distant queen of heaven but a courageous and sensitive woman of indisputable humanity. In free verse, unrhymed quatrains and prose-poems, Monaghan offers a new vision of Mary that is unconstrained by traditional expectations of the woman’s role. Mary: A Novel in Verse puts its title character at the centre, rather than the periphery, of a story of spiritual growth and redemption. Patricia Monaghan is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at DePaul University in Chicago and founding fellow of the Black Earth Institute, a think-tank for artists who connect spirituality, ecology and social justice. Her four previous volumes of poetry include Dancing with Chaos, published by Salmon Poetry in 2002. She won the Pushcart Prize for Literature in 2004.
Salmon Poetry | Paperback | £10.00 978-1-907056-87-1 | 210x134mm | 78pp | December 2011
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Budapest to Babel by Ágnes Lehóczky Egg Box | Hardback 80pp | £12.99 978-0-954392-06-2
The Captain’s Tower: Poems for Bob Dylan at 70 by Phil Bowen et al (eds) Seren | Paperback 120pp | £9.99 978-1-854115-60-7
Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology by Jessie Lendennie (ed) Salmon Poetry | Paperback 462pp | £15.00 978-1-907056-50-5
The Double-Ended Key by Roy Davids Acumen | Paperback 88pp | £8.99 978-1-873161-27-2
A Few of Her Secrets by George Bradley Waywiser | Paperback 80pp | £8.99 978-1-904130-42-0
The Game of Bear by Peter Bennet Flambard | Paperback 72pp | £8.00 978-1-906601-25-6
Heavenly Life by Ramsey Nasr Banipal | Paperback 180pp | £7.99 978-0-954966-69-0
House of Bees by Stephen Murray Salmon | Paperback 100pp | £10.00 978-1-907056-71-0
I Spy Pinhole Eye by Philip Gross, Simon Denison Cinnamon | Paperback 80pp | £11.99 978-1-905614-99-8
The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse by Eileen Jones (ed) Iron | Paperback 130pp | £8.00 978-0-955245-09-1
Later Selected Poems by Sheenagh Pugh Seren | Paperback 120pp | £9.99 978-1-854114-97-6
Learning Gravity by Helen Oswald tall-lighthouse | Paperback 62pp | £8.00 978-1-904551-77-5
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poet r y The Method by Rob Stanton Penned in the Margins | Paperback 80pp | £8.99 978-0-956546-76-0
Modern Persian Poetry by Mahmud Kianush (ed) Rockingham | Paperback 216pp | £9.95 978-1-873468-35-7
New Collected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer Bloodaxe | Paperback 256pp | £12.00 978-1-852244-13-2
Open Plan by Graham Fulton Smokestack | Paperback 64pp | £7.95 978-0-956417-56-5
Our Sweet Little Time by Hamish Ironside Iron | Paperback 144pp | £6.00 978-0-955245-07-7
Piano by Eva Bourke Dedalus | Paperback 120pp | £10.99 978-1-906614-41-6
Pray for Us Sinners by Joolz Denby Comma Poetry | Paperback 80pp | £6.99 978-0-954828-06-6
Pro Eto – That’s What by Vladimir Mayakovsky Arc | Hardback & Paperback 160pp | £15.99 / £12.99 978-1-904614-71-5 (hb) 978-1-904614-31-9 (pb)
Red: Contemporary Black British Poetry by Kwame Dawes (ed) Peepal Tree | Paperback 252pp | £9.99 978-1-845231-29-3
Selected Poems by Una Marson Peepal Tree | Paperback 164pp | £10.99 978-1-845231-68-2
Sound Archive by Nerys Williams Seren | Paperback 72pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-38-6
Sparrow Tree by Gwyneth Lewis Bloodaxe | Paperback 64pp | £8.95 978-1-852248-99-4
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Staying Alive by Neil Astley (ed) Bloodaxe | Paperback 496pp | £10.95 978-1-852245-88-7
Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds Seren | Paperback 64pp | £7.99 978-1-854114-61-7
Swan by Mary Oliver Bloodaxe | Paperback 96pp | £8.95 978-1-852249-07-6
The Tightrope Wedding by Michael Laskey Smith Doorstop | Paperback 68pp | £6.95 978-1-906613-28-0
Third World Girl: Selected Poems by Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze Bloodaxe | Paperback 192pp | £12.00 978-1-852249-10-6
Twelve Nudes by Ross Sutherland Penned in the Margins | Paperback 48pp | £9.50 978-0-956546-73-9
Undraining Sea by Vahni Capildeo Egg Box | Hardback 112pp | £12.99 978-0-955939-90-7
Voices at the World’s Edge by Paddy Bushe (ed) Dedalus | Hardback & Paperback 170pp | £20.99 / £12.50 978-1-906614-36-2 (hb) 978-1-906614-35-5 (pb)
What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo by Pascale Petit Seren | Paperback 72pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-15-7
Women’s Work by Eva Salzman, Amy Wack (eds) Seren | Hardback 304pp | £25.00 978-1-854114-30-3
A Year in the Bull-Box by Glyn Hughes Arc | Hardback & Paperback 64pp | £10.99 / £7.99 978-1-906570-79-8 (hb) 978-1-906570-78-1 (pb)
You by John Haynes Seren | Paperback 72pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-17-1
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Angel Merle Collins
Chameleon Beda Higgins
Classic novel from Grenada’s foremost writer; tells story of the 1983 US invasion.
Winnner of the 2009 Mslexia International Short Story Competition.
First published to great acclaim in 1987, Angel begins in 1951, when the workers of Grenada revolted against the white estate owners, moving forward to 1983 when the US invaded to put an end to a radical experiment that had turned violently in on itself. At the story’s heart are the headstrong Angel and her mother, Doodsie. What makes Angel such a rewarding novel to return to, especially in this revised new edition, is the seamless movement between the warmth and tensions of family life and the seriousness of irruptive, life-changing political conflict.
Chameleon is a collection of twelve stories from the winner of the 2009 Mslexia International Short Story Competition, which annually attracts thousands of entries. In the tradition of fairytales, the stories sharply observe the human condition, good and bad, villainous and heroic, with a satisfying twist in each tale.
“[There is] a richness, a thickness, a stinging slangy thatthere thingyness of observation and detail…” Robert Nye, The Guardian Merle Collins was born in 1950 in Aruba. She was deeply involved in the Grenadian revolution and served as a research coordinator for the Government of Grenada. Her second novel, The Colour of Forgetting, was published in 1995, and her short-story collection The Ladies are Upstairs by Peepal Tree in 2011. Her third and most recent poetry collection is Lady in a Boat (Peepal Tree, 2003). She teaches Caribbean Literature at the University of Maryland. Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £12.99 978-1-845231-85-9 | 150x150mm | 320pp | July 2011
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Chameleon includes tales about the vivid intensity of a child’s imagination, the confusion of adolescent love, and the darker side of human nature. Beda Higgins writes poetry and prose and is published in various anthologies and collections. In 2004 she received a Northern Promise Award for her first novel, and her second novel was one of five shortlisted in the National Lit. Idol Competition. In 2010 she received a Time to Write Award to complete her third novel. She works part-time as a Practice Nurse and has received two Queen’s Nursing Institute Awards to fund studies of writing as a therapeutic tool. She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne and is married with three children.
Iron Press | Paperback | £8.00 978-0-956572-50-9 | 210x148mm | 108pp | July 2011
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Second Chance Siân James “A superb ear for dialogue and a marksman’s eye for revealing detail” – The Sunday Times. First published in 2000, this Seren edition is a reprint of one of Siân James’ most widely acclaimed novels. Returning home to Wales for her mother’s funeral, actress Kate Rivers is overwhelmed by her past and forced to take stock of her life. Kate finds herself questioning her relationship with photographer Paul, and drawn to her charismatic (and married) cousin, Rhydian. But is her affair a second chance at happiness, or just a dangerous infatuation? Siân James writes with both panache and humour, her style at once homely, unpretentious and brilliantly realistic. “Siân James writes fluently and with lively humour.” The Times Siân James was brought up and educated in west Wales. Her twelve novels include Storm at Arberth (1995), Love and War (2004) and Return to Hendre Ddu (2009), all published by Seren. She has twice won the Yorkshire Post Prize for Fiction, and her novel A Small Country was filmed as the award-winning Calon Gaeth in 2006. Her translation of Kate Roberts’ The Awakening is also published by Seren (2006). Seren | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-854115-43-0 | 216x138mm | 230pp | July 2011
Crossing the Lines edited by Jackie Kay and Kachi A. Ozumba Anthology of new writing by international students living in the UK.
With contributors from five continents, Crossing the Lines features the 14 best stories from the International Student Short Story Competition run by the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA). These narrative voices explore a wide variety of social challenges and personal dilemmas, as writers from as far away as Nigeria, Australia and Malaysia share their impressions and experiences of life at Britain’s universities. Together they offer up an engaging insight into the lives of others. Jackie Kay was born in Scotland and now lives in Manchester. Her books include the 1991 poetry collection The Adoption Papers (Bloodaxe, 2000) and the 1988 novel Trumpet (Picador, 2011), which was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize. She is also the author of Wish I Was Here (Picador, 2011), winner of the British Book Awards Decibel Writer of the Year in 2006, and the memoir Red Dust Road (Picador, 2011), shortlisted for the 2011 Scottish Book of the Year. In 2006, she was awarded an MBE for services to literature. Kachi A. Ozumba is a Nigerian-born novelist and short-story writer. He won the Arts Council England’s Decibel Penguin Prize in 2006 and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Africa Region) in 2009. His debut novel, The Shadow of a Smile (2009), was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. He lives in Newcastle.
Flambard Press | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-906601-26-3 | 198x129mm | 224pp | July 2011
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The Survivors of the Crossing Austin C. Clarke
The Eye of the Scarecrow Wilson Harris
Debut 1964 novel from winner of Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Classic fiction from Guyanese author knighted in 2010.
It is 1961 and a ‘Labour’ party rules the self-governing colony of Barbados, but the sugar estate workers wonder whether slavery has ever really ended. Austin C. Clarke’s first novel rages against the ‘White’ alliance of the landowning class and the church, and their Black supporters. Protagonist Rufus stands up, determined that this is not how things should be. First published in 1964, this is a young man’s book whose acerbic comedy of status, playacting and double-dealing in the village remains a powerful debut in a distinguished literary career.
An unnamed narrator in 1960s London reflects on three periods of his life in Guyana which altered his understanding of the world. In 1948 he witnesses a march of workers protesting the killing of their comrades by police during a bitter strike; and so begins a radical revision of Wordsworth’s strategy of exploring imagination, memory and event in The Prelude. Harris challenges the reader by removing the props of linear narrative and conventional characterisation, offering in their place a Proustian richness of sensuous associations – proof positive of his status as one of the Caribbean’s most original and visionary writers.
Austin C. Clarke was born in Barbados in 1934 in a poor single parent family with an absent father. He left for Canada in 1955, settling in Toronto. His first two novels are set in Barbados, but thereafter much of his fiction has focused on the lives of West Indians in Canada, as a result of which he has been hailed as the country’s first multicultural writer. His 2002 novel The Polished Hoe won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and is set in 1930s Barbados. He is the author of eleven novels, six short-story collections and several works of memoir. In 1998, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845231-66-8 | 234x156mm | 240pp | August 2011
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Wilson Harris was born in Guyana in 1921. Resident in the UK since 1959, since his retirement he has been in demand as Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at many leading universities. He has twice won the Guyana Prize for Literature. He was knighted in 2010 for his services to literature.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-845231-64-4 | 206x135mm | 112pp | August 2011
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South of South edited by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
The Day of the Sardine Sid Chaplin
Anthology exploring the nature of migration in the 21st century.
50th anniversary edition and Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime from 3rd October 2011.
Most migrants arrive at their destinations by a combination of serendipity and choicelessness. The question – how did you arrive here? – is always answered with a convoluted mix of myth, love, family ties, budget, language, persecution, opportunity and interruption. This has been Nii Parkes’ own experience, and in South of South he brings together a distinguished selection of contemporary writers who feel the same way. With stories from Romesh Gunesekera, Zoe Wicomb, Nam Le, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Tahmina Anam, Brian Chikwava, Niki Aguirre, Junot Diaz and Naomi Alderman, this is a rich mix of writing re-imagining the dynamics of migration in the 21st century.
Sid Chaplin’s classic novel of disaffection in 1960s Newcastle, The Day of the Sardine, charts a young man’s uneasy passage into adulthood. Harsh and occasionally comic, Arthur Haggerston’s story is set against the background of a young workforce absorbed into tedious, repressive employment where the only outlets come through street violence and gang warfare. The industrial landscape may have been lost to the past, but the essence of Chaplin’s novel is easily recognisable amid the urban tensions of Britain today.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes was born in the UK and raised in Ghana. A former Poet-in-Residence at the Poetry Café, he has performed on major stages across the world, including at the Royal Festival Hall and at the London Mayor’s vigil on July 14, 2005 in response to the London bombings. His most recent collection is The Makings of You (Peepal Tree, 2010). His poem ‘Tin Roof ’ was selected for Poems on the Underground in 2007 and his novel Tail of the Blue Bird was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009. Nii also co-edited the groundbreaking Tell Tales: Volume I short-story anthology (2005) with Courttia Newland.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845231-54-5 | 206x135mm | 248pp | August 2011
“Chaplin’s prose is wonderfully alive, and his novel is itself an overlooked but untarnished gem.” The Independent “This is a welcome return to print for the early 60s chronicle of Geordie man-child Arthur Haggerston as he negotiates the void between a failed education system and a stagnant labour market.” The Guardian Sid Chaplin (1916–86) influenced a generation of writers including David Storey, Stan Barstow and Keith Waterhouse, and his novels and stories enjoyed a popular readership in the 1960s and 1970s. Flambard Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-873226-72-8 | 216x138mm | 224pp | October 2011
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The Prince’s Pen Horatio Clare Latest in Seren’s strong-selling New Stories from the Mabinogion series, featuring the likes of Owen Sheers and Gwyneth Lewis. England is now a defeated archipelago, but somewhere in the higher ground to the far west, insurrection is brewing. Can Ludo and Levello, the self-styled kings of Wales, free the British Isles without the help of Pakistan, the only other country left in the free world? Award-winning author Horatio Clare refracts politics, faith and the contemporary world order through some of the earliest British myth to question our ideas about outsiders, infidels and the enemy within. Horatio Clare was born in London in 1973, and grew up in the Black Mountains of South Wales. Running for the Hills (2006) was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He received a Somerset Maugham Award in 2009 for A Single Swallow (Vintage, 2010). He divides his time between South Wales, Lancashire and London. Seren | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-854115-52-2 | 194x126mm | 200pp | October 2011
The White Trail Fflur Dafydd Winner of Hay Emerging Writer of the Year Award in 2009.
In The White Trail, Fflur Dafydd transforms the medieval Welsh Arthurian myth of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ into a 21st-century quest for love and revenge. Cilydd’s wife Goleuddydd, who is nine months pregnant, seems to vanish into thin air at a supermarket one wintry afternoon. Cilydd enlists his cousin, Arthur – a private eye who has never solved a single case – to help him with the investigation. So begins a tale of intrigue and confusion that ends with a wild boar chase and a dangerous journey to the House of the Missing. Fflur Dafydd was born in 1978 in Carmarthen. The recipient of many awards for her Welsh-language writing, most recently the 2009 Daniel Owen Memorial Prize, her first English novel, Twenty Thousand Saints (Alcemi, 2008), received the Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer of the Year Award at the Guardian Hay Festival in 2009. She was recently chosen by the British Council as the first ever Welsh participant on Iowa University’s International Writing Program. Seren | Paperback | £7.99 978-1-854115-51-5 | 194x126mm | 200pp | October 2011
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Liar Dice Rebecca Gethin
Near Open Water Keith Jardim
Winner of the 2010 Cinnamon Press Novel Award.
Short stories from widely-anthologised Caribbean writer.
Petronella has never felt that her life was on course: from growing up in 1950s Yorkshire with her glamorous Italian mother Maddalena, to her failed marriage and struggles with her son. But when her father Alex dies, she finds a chest containing her mother’s belongings and sets out on a path of discovery. She learns about her parents’ first meeting, in wartime, when Maddalena was part of a partisan brigade in the mountains of Italy. She then makes the journey to Porto Romola and, helped by local historian Nando, pieces together not only her parents’ story – including the hours they spent playing liar dice to while away time between missions – but also her own, one that might include Nando.
This collection of short stories is disturbing in its honesty, as it focuses a sharp yet intimate eye upon the people of the Caribbean. The characters face problems of freedom, history, race, class, violence, entrapment and morality. Theirs is a region in constant flux, trying to break away from its dehumanising past, yet uncertain how to manage the present and plan for the future. Keith Jardim is unflinching in his portrayal of the realities of Caribbean life: if any peace is to be found, it is either hard-won or precarious. Though the stories can be dark, however, they also find solace in the natural beauty of the Caribbean.
Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor. Her first poetry collection, River is the Plural of Rain, was published in 2009 and she has read her poems in London and Devon, on local radio and on television. She is currently a tutor of Creative Writing in a prison. Liar Dice is her first novel and winner of the Cinnamon Press Novel Award 2010.
Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-907090-43-1 | 216x140mm | 272pp | October 2011
Keith Jardim is from Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana. His stories have appeared in many publications, including the anthologies Tell Tales 4: The Global Village, edited by Courttia Newland and Monique Roffey (Peepal Tree, 2009), and Trinidad Noir (Akashic, 2008). In 2008 he was invited to read at the 10th International Short Story Conference in Cork, Ireland. He is currently Assistant Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Gulf University in Kuwait. Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845231-88-0 | 206x135mm | 224pp | October 2011
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The Keys of Babylon Robert Minhinnick
A Flying Fish Whispered Elma Napier
New short stories from twice winner of Wales Book of the Year Award.
Important reissue of ‘lost’ Dominican novel from 1938.
In Albania, Mexico, China, Iraq, Israel, Wales, the US, London… people are on the move. Migration and immigration are key issues of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Keys of Babylon is a collection of 15 linked stories by award-wining poet and author Robert Minhinnick, giving voices to migrants around the globe. These stories of migration reflect a comprehensive mix of hope, success, failure, fear, indifference and passion.
When Teresa Craddock joins her brother Tommy on an island that is and isn’t Dominica, she is in flight from life and the death of her fiancé. On the island she finds a congenial new home and rediscovers a zest for life. Indeed, when Derek Morell, the new owner of an old estate, signals an unmistakeable interest in her, Teresa is more than ready for an adventure, despite the inconvenient fact that Morell is married. But what seems to begin as a witty account of romance in a tropical setting reveals itself to be an important ‘lost’ work in Caribbean fiction, parallel to the work of Phyllis Allfrey and Jean Rhys. Ultimately, A Flying Fish Whispered becomes a deeply imaginative exploration of different kinds of Caribbeans. Introduction by Evelyn O’Callaghan.
Finally, the stories of each of the main characters come together in the closing narrative, surveying their circumstances on one particular day. Robert Minhinnick was born in 1952, and now lives in Porthcawl, South Wales. He has twice won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem, as well as the Wales Book of the Year Award in 1993 and 2006 for his collections of essays Watching the Fire Eater (Seren, 1995) and To Babel and Back (Seren, 2005). His first novel, Sea Holly (Seren, 2007), was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize.
Seren | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-854115-50-8 | 216x138mm | 260pp | October 2011
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Elma Napier was born in Scotland in 1892 and settled in with her family at Calibishie, Dominica in 1932. She quickly became a leading literary and political personality on the island, and in 1940 became the first woman ever to be elected to a Caribbean legislature. Apart from two autobiographies, Youth is a Blunder and Winter in July, she wrote a further novel with a Dominican setting, Duet in Discord, also under the pen name of Elizabeth Garner. She died in Dominica in 1973. Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £12.99 978-1-845231-02-6 | 206x135mm | 324pp | October 2011
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The Children of Sisyphus Orlando Patterson
Painting Away Regrets Opal Palmer Adisa
Caribbean Modern Classic, introduced by Kwame Dawes.
Powerful novel spanning the US, Africa and the Caribbean.
The Children of Sisyphus is the story of Dinah, a prostitute who lives and fails to find love on the Dungle, the rubbish heap where the very poorest squat. Trapped by patriarchy and male passivity, and cursed by one of her rivals, Dinah is forced into a panicked flight to save herself. But involvement with a revival church and the favour of Shepherd John, who proposes a new life outside Jamaica, leads her to the delusion that she has found escape and meaning, a lived lie that has tragic consequences. In Patterson’s brutally poetic existentialist novel, dignity comes with a stoic awareness of the absurdity of life. Introduced by Kwame Dawes.
When Crystal and Donald meet they are two modern, urban professionals, caught in the currents of life and fundamentally unsuited to one another, but bound by the one thing they have in common: powerful sexual desires. Marriage and four children later, Crystal and Donald are at a crossroads. Framed by the Yoruba belief system, the novel dances between the real-life drama that unfolds between Crystal and Donald and the spiritual fantasy world of the Orishas, where every human act has a spiritual ramification. Moving between California, Africa and the Caribbean, Painting Away Regrets is a compelling story of love, betrayal, madness and reconciliation.
Orlando Patterson was born in Jamaica in 1940. Having studied at the University of the West Indies and at the London School of Economics, in 1970 he took the position of Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard, where he is now John Cowles Professor of Sociology. The Children of Sisyphus received the First Prize for Fiction at the Dakar Festival of Negro Arts in 1966. His other novels are An Absence of Ruins (1967) and Die the Long Day (1972). He was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Government of Jamaica in 1999.
Opal Palmer Adisa was born in Jamaica, but has lived and worked in the US for almost forty years. She is the author of twelve books, including the poetry collections Caribbean Passion (2004) and I Name Me Name (2008), and the short-story collection Until Judgment Comes (2007); all three are published by Peepal Tree. She has taught at several universities including Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the editor of the Caribbean Writer.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-845230-94-4 | 206x135mm | 224pp | October 2011
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £15.99 978-1-845231-52-1 | 206x135mm | 420pp | November 2011
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Off the Beaten Tracks: Stories by Russian Hitchhikers Irina Bogatyreva, Tatiana Mazepina and Igor Savelyev Three novellas by winners of the Debut Prize for young Russian authors. This book by and about Russian hitchhikers takes the reader on a journey along the endless roads of Siberia, the Urals, the Altai, Central Russia and beyond. Included are Irina Bogatyreva’s short novel Hitchhiking, Igor Savelyev’s Pale City, and Tatiana Mazepina’s Journey towards Paradise – all winners of the Debut Prize. These hitchhikers call themselves “the last generation of free travelers”, hastening to make the most of the places at the back of beyond. Jack Kerouac is their guru – only on the road do they ever really feel free. “Today an unusually gifted generation is entering Russian literature... Literature has not seen such an influx of energy in a long time.” Olga Slavnikova, director of the Debut Prize Irina Bogatyreva was born in 1982 on the Volga. She has won several important literary awards, including the Debut Prize for Auto-Stop. Tatiana Mazepina was born in 1986. She won the Debut Prize for a travelogue about her Eastern travels. Igor Savelyev was born in 1983 in Bashkiria. He won the Debut Prize in 2004.
Glas | Paperback | £8.99 978-5-717200-92-9 | 200x125mm | 300pp | November 2011
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The Scared Generation Vasil Bykov and Boris Yampolsky “Written in an intense, suffocating style, they make for powerful reading” – The Moscow Times. Glas presents an important reissue of two novels concerned with the problem of retaining humanity in inhuman conditions, and the dilemma of moral choice versus personal safety. The Old Arbat by Boris Yampolsky examines the inner state of a hunted man as he wanders around Moscow trying to escape the shadowing KGB. Like Yampolsky himself, the hero saw action in World War II, but now, in this late Stalinist atmosphere of witch-hunting and political intolerance, he is paralysed by uncontrollable terror. Yet at some point his hopelessness produces an inner freedom which gives the hunted man strength to resist. In The Manhunt by Vasil Bykov, a dispossessed peasant returns in secret from his Siberian exile to his home village in Belarus. The local Cheka, headed by his own son, is hunting him. As he walks towards his old house he looks back on his life. Boris Yampolsky (1912-1972) was a noted novelist and journalist in the late 1950s. His major novel, The Regime Street, was banned by the censor and only published in the 1990s under the title The Old Arbat. Vasil Bykov (19242003) is the most widely-read Belarussian author outside of his native country. Winner of many top literary prizes and nominated for a Nobel Prize several times, he is best known for his war novels.
Glas | Paperback | £8.99 978-5-717200-90-5 | 200x125mm | 270pp | November 2011
FI CTIO N Amongst Thistles and Thorns by Austin C. Clarke Peepal Tree | Paperback 208pp | £8.99 978-1-845231-47-7
A Book of Blues by Courttia Newland Flambard | Paperback 224pp | £8.99 978-1-906601-22-5
Clay by Gladys Mary Coles Flambard | Paperback 272pp | £8.99 978-1-906601-19-5
Daniel’s Beetles by Tony Bianchi Seren | Paperback 220pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-44-7
Dog-Heart by Diana McCaulay Peepal Tree | Paperback 244pp | £9.99 978-1-845231-23-1
The Dreams of Max and Ronnie by Niall Griffiths Seren | Paperback 168pp | £7.99 978-1-854115-02-7
Smoked Meat Rowena Macdonald “Funny, brilliantly observed and leaves you wanting more – an author to keep an eye on” – Scott Pack. Though smothered in snow half the year, Montreal’s demimonde burns with the secret hurts and poignant epiphanies of those living there. Smoked Meat paints a portrait of a vibrant melting pot buzzing with sexual braggadocio and illicit opportunities. A student devastates his waitress girlfriend by falling in love with a man in a sauna; a lifemodel upsets the delicate equilibrium between two artists; and a teenage shop assistant does what she can to lose her virginity to her boss. The city’s seedy mores are slowly corrupting their innocence, turning them, like Montreal’s signature dish, from green to smoked meat. “Confident, funny and poignant – Macdonald’s world draws the reader in irresistibly.” Jane Rogers “Deliciously erotic and hugely readable, with some wonderful moments of illumination.” Maureen Freely Rowena Macdonald grew up in the West Midlands. While living in Montreal after graduation, she worked as a waitress, bartender, life-model and cleaner. She now lives in London and works at the House of Commons. Her stories have appeared in anthologies published by Serpent’s Tail, Roast Books and the Do-Not Press. She has won two Asham Awards, the 2010 Exeter Writers competition and the 2008 Writers Inc competition. Flambard Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-906601-33-1 | 198x129mm | 256pp | November 2011
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Felicity and Barbara Pym by Harrison Solow Cinnamon | Paperback 208pp | £8.99 978-1-907090-11-0
High Tides by Ruth Henderson Red Squirrel | Paperback 282pp | £6.99 978-0-955402-75-3
The Icarus Diaries by Kate Hoyland Cinnamon | Paperback 240pp | £8.99 978-1-907090-20-2
It’s Just the Beating of My Heart by Richard Aronowitz Flambard | Paperback 254pp | £8.99 978-1-906601-13-3
Knives by Wendy Robertson Iron Press | Paperback 128pp | £8.00 978-0-955245-06-0
The Ladies are Upstairs by Merle Collins Peepal Tree | Paperback 160pp | £8.99 978-1-845231-79-8
The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness Seren | Paperback 356pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-41-6
The Legend of Liz and Joe by John Murray Flambard | Paperback 224pp | £8.99 978-1-906601-07-2
Le Temps des Cerises by Zillah Bethell Seren | Paperback 304pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-22-5
The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis Seren | Paperback 192pp | £7.99 978-1-854115-23-2
The Myth of Justice by Graham Pears Red Squirrel | Paperback 392pp | £6.99 978-0-955402-77-7
The Ninth Wave by Russell Celyn Jones Seren | Paperback 176pp | £7.99 978-1-854115-14-0
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FI CTIO N Not Tonight Neil by Ian Gregson Cinnamon | Paperback 254pp | £8.99 978-1-907090-37-0
Of Age and Innocence by George Lamming Peepal Tree | Paperback 436pp | £14.99 978-1-845231-45-3
Perfect Architect by Jayne Joso Alcemi | Paperback 200pp | £8.99 978-0-956012-52-4
A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees by Clare Dudman Seren | Paperback 300pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-18-8
The Quality of Light by Richard Collins Seren | Paperback 192pp | £8.99 978-1-854115-36-2
The Rotting Spot by Valerie Laws Red Squirrel | Paperback 395pp | £6.99 978-1-906700-10-2
Sardines and Oranges by Margaret Obank (ed) Banipal | Paperback 222pp | £8.99 978-0-954966-61-4
The Scent of the Past by Wayne Brown Peepal Tree | Paperback 384pp | £14.99 978-1-845231-53-8
Shadows Move Among Them by Edgar Mittelholzer Peepal Tree | Paperback 358pp | £12.99 978-1-845230-91-3
The Sheep Who Changed the World by Neil Astley Flambard | Paperback 254pp | £8.99 978-1-873226-75-9
Soothing Music for Stray Cats by Jayne Joso Alcemi | Paperback 256pp | £9.99 978-0-955527-25-8
Speak to Strangers by Gemma Seltzer Penned in the Margins | Paperback 112pp | £9.99 978-0-956546-79-1
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Special Needs by Sue Vickerman Cinnamon | Paperback 254pp | £8.99 978-1-907090-33-2
Squaring the Circle by Natasha Perova, Olga Slavnikova (eds) Glas | Paperback 300pp | £8.99 978-5-717200-86-8
Stranded by Val McDermid Flambard | Hardback & Paperback 216pp | £14.99 / £7.99 978-1-873226-76-6 (hb) 978-1-873226-74-2 (pb)
Sweetheart by Alecia McKenzie Peepal Tree | Paperback 138pp | £8.99 978-1-845231-77-4
A Time for Justice by Graham Pears Red Squirrel | Paperback 376pp | £6.99 978-1-906700-39-3
Touch by Graham Mort Seren | Paperback 220pp | £7.99 978-1-854115-12-6
Truth Games by Bobbie Darbyshire Cinnamon | Paperback 288pp | £8.99 978-1-905614-72-1
The Turing Test by Chris Beckett Elastic | Paperback 230pp | £7.99 978-0-955318-18-4
Twenty Thousand Saints by Fflur Dafydd Alcemi | Paperback 200pp | £9.99 978-0-955527-22-7
Uncle Freddie and the Prince of Wales by Alex Ferguson Iron Press | Paperback 240pp | £10.00 978-0-955245-08-4
While Gods are Falling by Earl Lovelace Peepal Tree | Paperback 256pp | £10.99 978-1-845231-48-4
White Ravens by Owen Sheers Seren | Paperback 192pp | £7.99 978-1-854115-03-4
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Playtime Peter Mortimer Inspiring collection of plays written and produced with young people.
The plays in this book came about through the unique work done in schools by Peter Mortimer – through which the pupils themselves turned creators, producers, actors. The youngsters helped to create the plot, characters and style of each play, were often involved in costume/set design, and acted out the finished roles. The plays’ themes, all run through with humour, include the pitfalls of winning the lottery, the trappings of power, and global pollution as seen through an alien invasion, while the settings are as diverse as a circus, a palace where nothing has ever changed, and a beach in Brazil. All these plays were given public performances, often in professional theatres. In an age of increasingly narrow school curricula, Playtime is the proof of the rewards that such a risky, often terrifying approach can bring. Peter Mortimer is a poet, playwright, editor and traveller who has lived in the north-east of England since 1970. Over the last two decades more than twenty of his plays for adults have been produced. In 1973 he founded Iron Press and he remains editor to this day. In addition to three poetry collections, he has published various ‘extreme’ books, the most recent of which is Camp Shatila, describing the two months he spent living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut (Five Leaves, 2009). Flambard Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-906601-27-0 | 198x129mm | 224pp | August 2011
The Bowling was Superfine: West Indian Writing and West Indian Cricket edited by Stewart Brown and Ian McDonald Explores the importance of cricket to the cultures of the Caribbean.
Stewart Brown and Ian McDonald present a multi-faceted portrait of the significance of cricket to the Caribbean and the attraction of Caribbean cricket to the outside world. With poems, calypsos, stories, extracts from novels, essays, speeches and articles, the editors show cricket inhabiting all areas of the Caribbean imagination. From its expression at the highest level on the global field of play, to the no less titanic struggles on the bumpier fields of the village or the sugar estate, this is a celebration of those who forged an art out of a game, those who transformed a colonial sport into the cutting edge of Caribbean nationalism, and, in the 1970s and 80s, changed the game forever. Stewart Brown has edited several anthologies of Caribbean writing, including The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry (with Ian McDonald) and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. He also edited The Art of Derek Walcott (Seren, 1995) and All are Involved: The Art of Martin Carter (Peepal Tree, 2000). Ian McDonald is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has served as a judge for the Guyana Prize for Literature. He is the author of the 1969 novel The Hummingbird Tree, which was recently made into a BBC film, four collections of poetry and a play.
Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £21.99 978-1-845230-54-8 | 234x156mm | 450pp | September 2011
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Coral Identities: Essays on Indo-Caribbean Literature edited by David Dabydeen and Letizia Gramaglia New critical perspectives on important branch of postcolonial literature. Assembled to meet the growing interest in Indo-Caribbean literature, this wide-ranging collection brings together a series of fresh and incisive critical articles. Issues investigated include gender and racial relations, religion, indenture, violence, nature, cricket and madness. The opening essay unpicks the diary of the first coolie voyage in 1838, while later essays provide important new readings of the work of Indo-Caribbean writers including V.S. Naipaul, Cyril Dabydeen, David Dabydeen, Patrick Chamoiseau, Lakshmi Persaud, Ramabai Espinet, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Rooplall Monar, Shani Mootoo, Ernest Moutoussamy and Sam Selvon. This diversity promises to stimulate dialogue on Indo-Caribbean literature and serve as a strong reference point for current and future students and researchers in the field. David Dabydeen is the Professor of Caribbean Literature at Warwick University. He is the author of six novels and a number of important studies on the relationship between slavery and art. Letizia Gramaglia is Associate Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies at Warwick University. Peepal Tree Press | Paperback | £16.99 978-1-845231-60-6 | 234x156mm | 240pp | October 2011
The Chapels of Wales D. Huw Owen Follows success of T.J. Hughes’s Wales’s Best One Hundred Churches (2007). The Chapels of Wales gathers together approximately 110 of these buildings, both cherished and uncherished, which have played such a central role in the faith, culture and history of 19th- and 20th-century Wales. D. Huw Owen journeys across Wales, exploring Welsh and Englishspeaking chapels in all parts of the country, in cities, towns and villages. He also ventures into the Welsh diaspora, taking in chapels in Liverpool, London, Oswestry, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Melbourne, Toronto, Gaiman in Patagonia and the Khasi Hills of north-east India. His comprehensive survey records some of the buildings now being lost and explores the life to be found within those which remain. D. Huw Owen is a former keeper of Pictures and Maps at the National Library of Wales. He is an active member of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, and of Chapel – the Welsh Chapels Heritage Society, and is a trustee of the Welsh Religious Buildings Trust. His Welsh language survey of Welsh Chapels, Capeli Cymru, was published by Y Lolfa in 2005.
Seren | Paperback | £14.99 978-1-854115-54-6 | 216x138mm | 280pp | October 2011
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Real Powys Mike Parker
Iona, a Spiritual Landscape Mike Pratt
Latest in Seren’s offbeat guidebook series; follows Real South Pembrokeshire by Tony Curtis.
Autobiographical account from the Western Isles of Scotland.
The old kingdom of Powys covers some of the most remote and thinly populated parts of Britain. Real Powys continues the ‘opening up’ of mid-Wales begun by At the Bright Hem of God, Peter Conradi’s reflection on life in Radnorshire (Seren, 2009). Could it be that Powys is a time capsule of British life fifty years ago? Is it a stronghold for Welsh language and culture? Or are there surprises to be stumbled upon among the mountains, forests, streams and farms of its mysterious countryside? Observant, passionate and witty, along the way Mike Parker takes in the death scene of Owain Glyndwr, nods to Francis Kilvert and Eric Gill in the Black Mountains, explores ruined Abbey Cwmhir and bustling Newtown, and follows the Heart of Wales railway line, the Roman Sarn Helen road and the rivers Severn and Wye. Mike Parker has written or co-written ten guidebooks, a novel and two non-fiction titles. He is the author of Wales: The Rough Guide (Rough Guide, 1997), Map Addict (Collins, 2010) and The Wild Rover (Collins, 2011). A former stand-up comedian, he presented the HTV series Coast to Coast and Great Welsh Roads.
Seren | Paperback | £9.99 978-1-854115-53-9 | 216x138mm | 220pp | October 2011
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For the past 20 years naturalist and writer Mike Pratt has been visiting the islands of Scotland. This is a personal account of an intimate connection with the tiny island of Iona, the iconic ‘Isle of Columba’, famed for centuries for its light, beauty and landscape. Part poet’s wanderings, part naturalist’s exploration, these essays celebrate the wildlife of the island and the surrounding seas, while paying close attention to the more subtle demands of reflection, self-discovery and humility in the face of the wild. This illustrated book is for anyone who loves Iona already, or for those intrigued by the magic and majesty of this small but intensely beautiful part of the world. Mike Pratt hails from North East England, and is a naturalist and writer. His first book, Wild, focused on his life-long connection to nature and wild places. He is currently Chief Executive of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust.
Red Squirrel Press | Paperback | £6.99 978-1-906700-47-8 | 210x148mm | 94pp | October 2011
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Nice Work If You Can Get It Herbert Williams
The Reading Quiz Book Adam Sowan
New autobiography from “the Renaissance Man of Welsh writers”.
Illustrated with special woodcuts and photographs of Reading.
“Williams takes a sure stance, analysing the moments and the events that have shaped his life and career. He looks back, not with a sentimental gaze, but with understanding and objectivity. Yes, there is compassion for family and friends; and yes, there is a degree of nostalgia for people and places that have long since disappeared from view. He would not be a Welshman if there were not. But the story that Herbert Williams tells – his story – is one of hard-edged realism… His is an attractive speaking voice (literally and on the page) and this technique, easy on the eye and ear, holds the attention of the reader, providing a page-turning quality to the prose that is a cross between journalism and literary fiction.” Phil Carradice, writer and broadcaster
Local historian Adam Sowan has explored all that the town of Reading has to offer, and presents here a witty, entertaining and challenging set of questions to stimulate the reader’s curiosity and develop a deeper acquaintance with this much-maligned town.
Herbert Williams is a highly respected poet, novelist, short-story writer and dramatist. His first collection of poetry was published in 1965. His poems, short stories and plays have been broadcast by the BBC, HTV and Thames Television, and he has contributed to New Welsh Review, Planet, the Western Mail, Iota and many other journals. Eight of his poems feature in the groundbreaking Library of Wales anthology Poetry 1900-2000, edited by Meic Stephens (2007). He is a Fellow of the Welsh Academy and a member of the Society of Authors. He currently lives in Cardiff. Cinnamon Press | Paperback | £8.99 978-1-907090-44-8 | 216x140mm | 160pp | October 2011
The book includes 80 questions, with detailed and informative answers, along with 40 photographs to identify. Adam Sowan’s previous books about Reading, all published by Two Rivers Press, include A Much-Maligned Town: Opinions of Reading 1126-2008 (2008), A Mark of Affection: The Soane Obelisk in Reading (2007), The Holy Brook (2003), Abattoirs Road to Zinzan Street: Reading’s streets and their names (2004). He also edited John Man’s The Stranger in Reading, published by Two Rivers Press in 2006.
Two Rivers Press | Paperback | £5.99 978-1-901677-76-8 | 216x138mm | 84pp | November 2011
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NO N-F IC TION Art in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on Poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva Bloodaxe | Paperback 224pp | £9.95 978-1-852248-64-2
Canterbury Tales: Chaucer Made Modern by Phil Woods Iron | Paperback 72pp | £5.95 978-0-906228-43-2
The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives by Lucy Evans, Emma Smith (eds) Peepal Tree | Paperback 360pp | £19.99 978-1-845231-26-2
The Dragon and the Crescent by Grahame Davies (ed) Seren | Paperback 240pp | £12.99 978-1-854115-57-7
Hurting God: Part Essay Part Rhyme by Rita Ann Higgins Salmon Poetry | Paperback 90pp | £10.00 978-1-907056-51-2
A Much-Maligned Town: Opinions of Reading 1126-2008 by Adam Sowan Two Rivers | Paperback 90pp | £8.95 978-1-901677-61-4
Music Lessons: Newcastle/ Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures by Fiona Sampson Bloodaxe | Paperback 64pp | £8.95 978-1-852249-09-0
Noteworthy: Images of Welsh Music by Bruce Cardwell Seren | Hardback 144pp | £14.99 978-1-854115-40-9
The Russian Word’s Worth by Michele Berdy Glas | Paperback 400pp | £12.00 978-5-717200-87-5
Stress Fractures: Essays on Poetry by Tom Chivers (ed) Penned in the Margins | Paperback 160pp | £9.99 978-0-956546-71-5
The Vagabond’s Breakfast by Richard Gwyn Alcemi | Paperback 200pp | £9.99 978-0-956012-55-5
What Did You Do in the War, Mummy? by Mavis Nicholson (ed) Seren | Paperback 280pp | £9.99 978-1-854115-29-4
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Acumen
Banipal
Drey
www.acumen-poetry.co.uk
www.banipal.co.uk
www.redsquirrelpress.com
Acumen is a literary journal that places an emphasis on poetry. Edited for 26 years by Patricia Oxley, Acumen publishes a varied and impressive list of poets and critics, with each issue containing around 50 new poems and translations, reviews, comment and correspondence. The magazine is also known to be on the lookout for highquality work by new and unknown talent of all ages.
Banipal offers a rich kaleidoscope of contemporary Arab writing, with recent issues featuring literature from Yemen, Tunisia, Iraq and Libya. Banipal has published hundreds of contemporary Arab authors in English translation – each magazine contains a wealth of poetry, fiction, interviews, book reviews and author photographs. In March 2008 Banipal won the UK Incwriters 2008-2010 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature (Magazines).
Drey is a new quarterly magazine of high-quality writing which seeks to promote poetry and prose in all its diversity.
“Acumen mixes poems and prose by celebrated and new writers who have something to say and say it well.” – Dannie Abse “A beacon of invention in the west, Acumen’s guiding light is valued throughout the wider world of letters. Printing the best, and not necessarily the most celebrated, is its policy.” – Peter Porter
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“Banipal provides an invaluable introduction for the English reader to the varied and unique literatures of the Middle East and the Maghreb which can be found in no other English-language literary magazine.” – Marilyn Hacker “Banipal is almost my chief source of information about current Arabic writing and cultural events. Without Banipal I would be much less well-read.” – Robert Irwin
Featuring essays, poetry, flash fiction and illustrations, each issue has its own theme, and is edited by the poet Kevin Cadwallender. The ethos of Drey magazine is to find and publish new writing wherever it appears, and to support new and established writers.
MA G AZ IN ES
Envoi www.cinnamonpress.com Envoi, now in its 54th year, is a high-quality poetry magazine that welcomes all poets, both new and established. Envoi publishes a small group of poems or a short sequence from each contributor rather than single poems. The style of the magazine is eclectic – but with a leaning towards uncluttered, lucid modern poetry, particularly poetry that is willing to take risks. The magazine also features a substantial section of reviews and occasional poetry-related articles and poetry in translation.
Modern Poetry in Translation www.mptmagazine.com MPT was founded by Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes in 1965 and is a journal with an international reputation for the wide range of poets and translators that it presents, and for serious and lively discussion of the art of translating poetry. The magazine was relaunched under the editorship of David and Helen Constantine in 2004. The real circumstances of the world may have changed, but issues of translation are every bit as pressing as they were when the magazine began. As the English language marches towards an apparent hegemony, the need for its readers and writers to be confronted by what is foreign is even greater still. Issues of MPT generally offer a themed special section, in addition to a wide-ranging selection of poems from other times and places, plus essays and reviews. The average issue comprises around 200 pages, and has a cover specially designed by the artist and designer, Lucy Wilkinson.
Poetry Wales www.poetrywales.co.uk Founded in 1965, Poetry Wales is a quarterly magazine with an international reputation for excellent poems, features and reviews from Wales and further afield. Poetry Wales is rooted in a rich bilingual culture and explores the diverse perspectives of Welsh poetry in English and its international relationships. It also publishes outstanding poetry from around the world, and includes a rich seam of poetry in translation. Poetry Wales is open to tradition and experiment, and to publishing poetry from a wide range of approaches. It is widely read by poets and the general reader, and runs the annual Purple Moose Poetry Wales pamphlet competition. Recent contributors include Geoffrey Hill, Anne Stevenson, Dannie Abse, Deryn Rees-Jones, Philip Gross, Marilyn Hacker, Richard Gwyn, Pascale Petit, Peter Finch, Anne Cluysenaar, Robert Minhinnick, Lee Harwood and Stephen Knight.
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The London Magazine
The North
The Rialto
www.thelondonmagazine. net
www.poetrybusiness.co.uk
www.therialto.co.uk
The North is intelligent and generous, essential reading for all lovers of good poetry. As a small independent magazine, The North does not follow trends, foster political affinities or keep up appearances. It doesn’t do lots of useful, necessary and boring things and it doesn’t put up with middle-of-the-road ideas. The most important thing is the quality of the writing.
Published three times a year since 1984, The Rialto is a magazine where you’ll find the poets you should be reading. In recent issues you will find poetry, reviews and features from the likes of Andrew Motion, Simon Armitage, Fleur Adcock, Carol Ann Duffy, Les Murray, C.K. Williams, Linda France and George Szirtes.
Since 1732 The London Magazine has played a vital role in the literary world, as a cultural review renowned for publishing only the best writers, artists and commentators from London and beyond. From Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats to T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath and William Boyd, The London Magazine delivers the finest original poetry, fiction and reviews, alongside wide-ranging essays on literature, the arts and society. Recent contributors include Beryl Bainbridge, Peregrine Worsthorne, Terry Waite, Jeremy Bowen, Moniza Alvi, Helen Dunmore and many more. Consistently on the pulse of what is happening on the literary scene, The London Magazine is a meeting place of the day’s greatest minds.
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“Excellent.” – Carol Ann Duffy, The Guardian “Redressing the balance of English poetry.” – Poetry Review “The North grows in authority with every issue.” – Andy Croft
“The Rialto is a poetry magazine that sets its bar perennially high. The formula is simple but effective: exceptional poetry and lots of it…” – The Guardian “Poetry gives us essential human pleasures and rewards, not least because it allows us to discover richer versions of ourselves. The Rialto, being reliably full of excellent new work, is an excellent place to find these pleasures and rewards.” – Sir Andrew Motion
publ is her pr of iles P UBL ISHER P RO FI LES
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Alcemi
Banipal Books
www.ylolfa.com
www.banipal.co.uk
Alcemi has experienced great success in developing new literary fiction writers in Wales and elsewhere: names such as Richard Gwyn, Rachel Trezise and Tristan Hughes have since gone on to make their name worldwide with publishers like Doubleday and Picador.
Banipal showcases contemporary literature in English translation from all over the Arab world through its books and magazine issues, bringing readers the best of established and emerging Arab authors in novels, short stories and poetry.
Alcemi’s own plaudits include Gee Williams’ Salvage, nominated for the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and Fflur Dafydd being named as the Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer of the Year 2009 for her novel Twenty Thousand Saints. Although no longer commissioning new novels in English, the Alcemi backlist is available through its Welsh-language counterpart, Y Lolfa.
Banipal engages in a continuous intercultural dialogue and exchange that opens a wide window for UK and other Western audiences on the realities of Arab culture in all its diversity and vibrancy, enabling fruitful discourse to develop that will lead to further exchange, mutual respect, new writings, deeper understanding, and Arab literature taking its rightful place in the canon of world literature.
Arc Publications
Bloodaxe Books
www.arcpublications.co.uk
www.bloodaxebooks.com
To this day, Arc still adheres to its founding principles: to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of world poetry.
Bloodaxe has revolutionised poetry publishing in Britain over the past 30 years. Internationally renowned for quality in literature and excellence in book design, its authors and books have won virtually every major literary award given to poetry, from the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Pulitzer to the Nobel Prize. Anthologies like Staying Alive and Being Alive, joined by the companion volume Being Human in March 2011, have broken new ground by opening up contemporary poetry to many thousands of new readers.
Arc Publications was established by Tony Ward in 1969 with the principal aim of introducing new work to an eager readership, initially through a series of hand-produced pamphlets and later through full collections. Over forty years on, he runs the press with fellow director Angela Jarman and an editorial board of three, from a converted textile mill on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border in the north of England, producing upwards of 20 new titles a year.
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Widely respected for its innovative, international and diverse range of poetry publishing, including a substantial list of books in translation, Bloodaxe publishes both new and established poets from Britain and Ireland, as well as many poets from the US, including the new Poet Laureate of the United States, W.S. Merwin. A growing number of Bloodaxe publications now include audio CDs or films on DVD of poets reading their work.
Dedalus Press
www.cinnamonpress.com
www.dedaluspress.com
Cinnamon Press is a small, independent publisher based in North Wales. It publishes around 25 titles each year, including poetry, fiction and anthologies that are both independent and innovative.
Dedalus Press is dedicated to contemporary poetry from Ireland, and to poetry from around the world in English translation. Under its current editor, the poet and broadcaster Pat Boran, Dedalus continues to introduce the work of new writers and, through anthology and other projects, to re-introduce readers to its many backlist titles. Established with a broadly modernist outlook, the press is primarily interested in serious writing but recognises and celebrates the broad diversity of styles that makes up contemporary poetry, from Ireland and further afield.
The Cinnamon list includes genre-defying titles and collaborative poetry/art titles such as I Spy Pinhole Eye by poet Philip Gross and photographer Simon Denison, winner of the Wales Book of the Year in 2010, as well as many other titles that have won or been shortlisted for major awards. Cinnamon’s reach also extends beyond Wales and the UK, representing international authors from Finland to Zimbabwe, the US to Bosnia. The Press also publishes Envoi, a poetry journal now in its 54th year.
Described by UNESCO.org as “among the most outwardlooking poetry presses in Ireland and the UK”, Dedalus publishes a podcast on iTunes (‘AudioRoom: New Writing from Ireland’) and is actively engaged in ‘spreading the word’ in print and online.
Comma Poetry
Egg Box Publishing
www.commapress.co.uk
www.eggboxpublishing.com
Comma Press is a not-for-profit publishing initiative dedicated to promoting new poetry and short fiction. Poets on its list include the Yorkshire-based author Gaia Holmes, punk performer Joolz Denby, Dadaist artist and songwriter turned poet Ed Barton, and science writer Helen Clare.
Founded in 2002 and incorporated in 2006, Egg Box is an independent poetry publisher whose influence continues to grow and be felt far and wide. It is based in Norwich and is run by the poet Nathan Hamilton. 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.
Based in Manchester and built on the literary wreckage of the now collapsed City Life magazine, Comma also runs a film-adaptation project, which commissions short film realisations of published poetry by aspiring independent film-makers, in conjunction with Version Festival.
As well as exciting collections from the likes of Ágnes Lehóczky and Vahni Capildeo, each year Egg Box publishes the Poetry and Prose anthologies of the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s leading creative writing schools.
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Cinnamon Press
publ is her pr of iles
Elastic Press
Hearing Eye
www.elasticpress.com
www.hearingeye.org
Elastic Press published from November 2002 until November 2008, specialising in short fiction collections and anthologies in a variety of genres. During this time Elastic won seven separate awards, including the Edge Hill Prize for Short Fiction, won by Chris Beckett’s collection, The Turing Test, in 2009. This title, along with some of the Elastic back catalogue, is still available although the press itself has ceased to publish due to the owner’s other commitments.
Hearing Eye is a small independent press established by John Rety and Susan Johns in 1987. Since then, Hearing Eye has published over 200 books and pamphlets by new and established poets, ranging from selections of haiku to epic poems. Hearing Eye is based at the Torriano Meeting House in Kentish Town, north London. The Meeting House has hosted weekly Sunday-evening poetry readings since the mid-1980s with a wide range of readers, including Dannie Abse, Les Murray and Mimi Khalvati. Many Hearing Eye books are written by poets who have read at the Meeting House, including many who have initially read a poem from the floor.
Flambard Press www.flambardpress.co.uk Flambard is an independent press now based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Established in 1990, Flambard’s list includes writers from all across the UK and abroad, yet the press remains especially supportive of writers from northern England. Flambard’s poetry forms the backbone of the press. Flambard has published several collections by well-known poets such as Peter Bennet and S.J. Litherland, coupled with a policy to incorporate first collections into each year’s planning. Flambard’s growing fiction programme has seen the publication of novels by established authors such as John Murray, Martin Edwards and Sid Chaplin, while also actively looking to take on first and second books. The press has also published books with a visual-art element, such as the poetry collection Night Train by Sean O’Brien and Birtley Aris.
Glas New Russian Writing www.glas.msk.su The premier showcase for contemporary Russian writing in English translation, Glas has been discovering new writers (Pelevin, Ulitskaya, Babchenko) and rediscovering under-appreciated past masters (Bulgakov, Platonov, Krzhizhanovsky) since 1991. Based in Moscow, Glas is the most comprehensive English-language source on Russian letters today – a must for libraries, students of world literature, and all those who love good writing. “Glas is a first-rate series, well planned and very well translated. Anyone interested in Russia and good writing should seek it out.” The Observer
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Iron Press www.ironpress.co.uk Iron Press is small but beautiful. It was set up in the NorthEast by the writer Peter Mortimer in the long-lost days of 1973, and Mortimer has remained the editor to this day. In more than a third of a century Iron has produced a truly eclectic body of work, championing the most interesting writers from its own region, the rest of the country, and sometimes world-wide. Iron is the country’s leading independent publisher of haiku, and published the first two books by David Almond in his pre-Skellig days.
Menard Press
Penned in the Margins
www.menardpress.co.uk
www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk
Menard Press was founded as a small magazine in 1969 and brought out its first book in 1971. In addition to literary texts – original and translated poetry, original and translated fiction, art and literary criticism – the press has published works and testimonies by survivors of Nazism, including the first English edition of Primo Levi’s poems.
Penned in the Margins is a dynamic literary arts company which combines live events, projects and tours with a commitment to publishing exciting, risk-taking new poetry. Its books have been Highly Commended in the Forward Prize and featured on Newsnight and in Time Out. The company is led by writer and arts producer Tom Chivers, recipient of a prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Breakthrough Award for his work with the annual London Word Festival.
Senior poets on the Menard list include F.T. Prince, Brian Coffey and Nicholas Moore. Translated poets include Nerval, Mallarmé, Rilke and Mandelstam, plus Sylvia Plath’s translations of Ronsard and one of Elaine Feinstein’s selections from the work of Marina Tsvetayeva. Among the works of prose criticism Menard has published are studies of Charles Reznikoff, Fernando Pessoa and Octavio Paz.
Penned in the Margins specialises in first collections by exciting young poets such as Ross Sutherland and Siddhartha Bose, and is also known for the acclaimed anthologies Generation Txt and City State: New London Poetry. “Good news for poetry.” The Times
Peepal Tree www.peepaltreepress.com Peepal Tree Press is the home of the best in Caribbean and Black British fiction, poetry, literary criticism, memoirs and historical studies. Well-known authors on the Peepal Tree list include Kamau Brathwaite, Christian Campbell, Austin C. Clarke, David Dabydeen and Kwame Dawes. Based in Leeds, Peepal Tree is a wholly independent company, founded in 1985, and now publishing around 30-40 books a year. The focus is on what George Lamming calls the Caribbean nation, wherever it is in the world, though Black British writing also features prominently. In 2009 Peepal Tree launched the Caribbean Modern Classics series, which restores to print essential classic books from the 1950s and 60s.
Red Squirrel www.redsquirrelpress.com Established in 2006, Red Squirrel Press publishes poetry, crime fiction novels, novellas and non-fiction. Authors on the Red Squirrel list include Bob Beagrie, Kevin Cadwallender, Tom Kelly, Kathleen Kenny, James Kirkup, Valerie Laws, Eleanor Livingstone and Andrew McMillan. The Press has been shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. Red Squirrel also runs the annual James Kirkup Memorial Poetry Competition and a quarterly magazine – Drey – launched in March 2011 and featuring poetry, flash fiction, artwork, reviews and essays. Founder Sheila Wakefield is Managing Editor and Kevin Cadwallender is Scottish Commissioning Editor and Creative Editor of Drey magazine.
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publ is her pr of iles
The Rialto
Seren
www.therialto.co.uk
www.serenbooks.com
With its commitment to placing the best new talent alongside established names, The Rialto is well-placed to spot and nurture new talent. The Rialto’s First Collection and Bridge Pamphlet series feature poets who are taking the first step from magazine to book publication.
Seren is a dynamic independent publisher of awardwinning poetry, fiction, translation, biography, art history, history and current affairs titles. For the last 30 years Seren has aimed to publish the best quality and most thought-provoking writing on offer, in well designed, well produced books. Prominent Seren authors include Dannie Abse, Sheenagh Pugh, Owen Sheers, Gwyneth Lewis, Niall Griffiths, Pascale Petit and Kathryn Simmonds.
The Rialto’s list of authors includes Allan Crosbie (Outswimming the Eruption, 2006), Emily Wills (Developing the Negative, 2008), John Siddique (The Prize, 2005) and Josephine Dickinson (Scarberry Hill, 2001). It has also published collections to mark the early deaths of poets Julia Casterton (Night Lightning, 2007) and Andrew Waterhouse, whose debut In won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2000 (2nd, 2002).
Rockingham Press
Many of Seren’s books and authors are shortlisted for – and win – major literary prizes across Britain and America, including the Costa, Forward, T.S. Eliot, Glen Dimplex and Ondaatje Prizes. Seren also publishes Poetry Wales magazine and maintains strong links with writing from Wales, as showcased in the popular Retellings of the Mabinogion series.
Rockingham Press www.rockingham-press.co.uk Rockingham Press was set up in 1991 to champion new and neglected poets and also Middle East poetry in translation. Since then Rockingham has published each year on average four paperback collections and one or two pamphlets. Its Middle East titles have included Modern Turkish Poetry (a Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Modern Persian Poetry, and works by Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar and Oktay Rifat. Poets published by Rockingham include Judi Benson, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Adèle Geras, John Greening, James Kirkup, Jane Kirwan, Lotte Kramer, William Oxley and Edward Storey.
Smith/Doorstop (The Poetry Business) www.poetrybusiness.co.uk The Poetry Business publishes books, pamphlets and audio under its Smith/Doorstop imprint, as well as the literary magazine The North. It also runs its own national Book & Pamphlet competition, Writing School and residential courses. The directors and co-editors are Ann and Peter Sansom. Smith/Doorstop poets have won or been shortlisted for almost every major literary prize, including the Forward on 11 occasions, while The North has been described by Poetry Review as “redressing the balance of English poetry”.
Salmon Poetry www.salmonpoetry.com Salmon Poetry was established in 1981 with the publication of The Salmon, a journal of poetry and prose, as an alternative voice in Irish literature. Since then it has produced over 300 volumes of poetry, and Salmon has become one of the most important publishers in the Irish literary world. Salmon’s catalogue includes initial works by Irish poets Rita Ann Higgins, Theo Dorgan, Moya Cannon, Mary O’Donnell, Eamonn Wall, Mary O’Malley, Eva Bourke, Kevin Higgins and Dave Lordan. Salmon has also published a range of international poets, and anthologies such as Salmon: A Journey in Poetry 1981-2007 and The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets.
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“One of the most vital and vitalising literature organisations in the country.” – Sir Andrew Motion
Two Rivers Press
www.smokestack-books.co.uk
www.tworiverspress.com
Smokestack Books aims to hold open a space for what is left of the English radical poetic tradition in the twentyfirst century. Smokestack champions poets who are unfashionable, radical, left-field or working a long way from the metropolitan centres of cultural authority.
Founded in 1994 by Reading artist Peter Hay, Two Rivers Press 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, local history, and new editions of classic poems, including Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Since 2004, Smokestack has published over forty titles. Smokestack’s authors include Linda France, Bob Beagrie, Katrina Porteous, Kathleen Kenny, N.S. Thompson and Jennifer Copley. Smokestack’s growing and distinguished international list includes Martín Espada (Puerto Rico), Francis Combes (France), Kristin Dimitrova (Bulgaria), András Mezei (Hungary) and Gustavo Pereira (Venezuela).
The press is strongly rooted in the community and has close links with Reading Museum, the University, Poet’s Café and other local arts organisations. Its contribution to Reading’s culture won it a Pride of Reading award in 2008. Poets published by Two Rivers include Adrian Blamires, Jane Draycott, A.F. Harrold, Gill Learner, Kate Noakes, Peter Robinson and Susan Utting.
tall-lighthouse
Waywiser
www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk
www.waywiser-press.com
Established in 1999, tall-lighthouse is a small poetry press dedicated to supporting both new and existing poets from the UK and Ireland as well as the US and Canada. It produces a varied selection of full collections, pamphlets, chapbooks and anthologies. It also uses its series of events – including the Poetry Café, London – to promote poets and their work.
Waywiser Press was founded in 2001 and has its head office in Oxfordshire and a subsidiary in Baltimore, USA. Waywiser publishes not just poetry but literary books of all kinds, including works of fiction, memoir, criticism and history. Waywiser also has an imprint, Between The Lines, which publishes book-length interviews with senior contemporary poets.
tall-lighthouse’s most recent publications include the debut British collection from Canadian poet Todd Swift, Mainstream Love Hotel, plus the Forward Prize-nominated Learning Gravity by Helen Oswald, and the selected poems of Keith Please and Brendan Cleary.
Waywiser specialises in modern poetry, publishing work by established writers such as Robert Conquest, Anthony Hecht, Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass and Richard Wilbur as well as by newcomers such as Carrie Jerrell, Dora Malech and Chris Preddle. Waywiser also runs the annual Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.
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IND EX
A
D
I
Adisa, Opal Palmer . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Dabydeen, David . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Idris Jones, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Alvi, Moniza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Dafydd, Fflur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 62
Ironside, Hamish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Aronowitz, Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Darbyshire, Bobby . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Astley, Neil . . . . . . . . . . 45, 45, 48, 61
Davids, Roy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Atkinson, Tiffany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Davies, Grahame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Jacqmin, François . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Dawes, Kwame . . . . . . . . . . 26, 34, 47
James, Christopher . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Dawes, Neville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
James, Sian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Denby, Joolz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Jara, Víctor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Denison, Simon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Jardim, Keith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Doumerc, Eric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Jones, Eileen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Dudman, Clare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Joso, Jayne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 61
Bethell, Zillah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
E
K
Bianchi, Tony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Espada, Martín . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Kay, Jackie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Bogatyreva, Irina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Evans, Ellie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Kehoe, Patrick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Boran, Pat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 33
Evans, Lucy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Keillor, Garrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
B Beagrie, Bob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Beckett, Chris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Bennet, Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Berdy, Michele . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Berry, James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Bourke, Eva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
J
Kenny, Kathleen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 F
Kianush, Mahmud . . . . . . . . . . 37, 47
Bradley, George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Ferguson, Alex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Kinsey, Chris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Breeze, Jean ‘Binta’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Fortune, Rowan B . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Kirkup, James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Brown, Judy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Fulton, Graham . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 47
Kramer, Lotte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Brown, Stewart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
Furniss, Damian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Kraushaar, Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Brown, Wayne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
G
L
Garland, Nicholas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Lamming, George . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Gethin, Rebecca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Laskey, Michael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Bowen, Phil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Bushe, Paddy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Byard, Olivia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Bykov, Vasil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Godfrey, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Laws, Valerie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 61
C
Gramaglia, Letizia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Le Marquand Hartigan, Anne . . . 39
Campbell, George . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Grattan, Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Learner, Gill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Capildeo, Vahni . . . . . . . . . . . . 33, 48
Gregson, Ian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Lehóczky, Ágnes . . . . . . . . . . . 39, 46
Cardwell, Bruce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Greig, Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Lendennie, Jessie . . . . . . . . . . . 40, 46
Celyn Jones, Russell . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Griffiths, Niall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Lewis, Gwyneth . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 60
Chaplin, Sid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Griffiths, Steve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Lightman, Ira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Chivers, Tom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Gross, Philip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 46
Lleshanaku, Luljeta . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Clare, Horatio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Gwyn, Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Lovelace, Earl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Clarke, Austin C. . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 59
H
M
Harris, Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Macdonald, Rowena . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Harrison, Joseph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Marshall, Pete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Hass, Robert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Marson, Una . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Haynes, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Mayakovsky, Vladimir . . . . . . . . . . 47
Henderson, Ruth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Mazepina, Tatiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Higgins, Beda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
McCallum, Shara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Higgins, Rita Ann . . . . . . . . . . 17, 68
McCaulay, Diana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Horovitz, Frances . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
McDermid, Val . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Hoyland, Kate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
McDonald, Ian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Hughes, Glyn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
McFarlane, Roy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Cluysenaar, Anne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Coles, Gladys Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Collins, Loretta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Collins, Merle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50, 60 Collins, Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Connolly, Anne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Constantine, David . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Constantine, Helen . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Cullinane, Majella . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
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S
McHenry, Eric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Salzman, Eva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
McKenzie, Alecia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Sam-La Rose, Jacob . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
McKiernan, Ethna . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Sampson, Fiona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Minhinnick, Robert . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Savelyev, Igor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Mittelholzer, Edgar . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Schnackenberg, Gjertrud . . . . . . . 21
Mok, Judith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Scully, James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Monaghan, Patricia . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Seltzer, Gemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Monson, Jane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Shaughnessy, Lorna . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Morgan, Esther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Sheers, Owen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Mort, Graham . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 62
Simmonds, Kathryn . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Mortimer, Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Simmonds, Kevin . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Mullineaux, Pete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Slavnikova, Olga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Murray, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Smart, Christopher . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Murray, Stephen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Smith, Emma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
N Napier, Elma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Nasr, Ramsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Newland, Courttia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Nicholson, Mavis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
IND EX
McGuinness, Patrick . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Solow, Harrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Sowan, Adam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67, 68 Stanton, Rob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Summers, Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Supervielle, Jules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Sutherland, Ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
North, Kate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 O Obank, Margaret . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Oliver, Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Oswald, Helen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
T Tagore, Rabindranath . . . . . . . . . . 22 Thielan, Ilsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Transtrรถmer, Tomas . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Tsvetaeva, Marina . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Owen, D. Huw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Ozumba, Kachi A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 P
U Underdown, David . . . . . . . . . 10, 48
Parker, Mike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
V
Parkes, Nii Ayikwei . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Vickerman, Sue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Patterson, Orlando . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Pears, Graham . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60, 62
W
Perova, Natasha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Wack, Amy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Petit, Pascale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Wall, Eamonn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Pratt, Mike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Walls, Eoghan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Pugh, Sheenagh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Warner, Ahren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Wilbur, Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
R
Wilde, Oscar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Robertson, Wendy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Wilkin, Michael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Rose, Sue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Williams, Herbert . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Rosenstock, Gabriel . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Williams, Nerys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Ryan, Gig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Woods, Phil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Woolley, David . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Yampolsky, Boris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
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Image credits Front Cover: ‘The Chair’ (2005) by John Vesty Poetry: ‘Dream’ (2002) by Eva Navarro Fiction: ‘Lambeau Descent’ (2004) by Jackie Hinkson Non-Fiction: ‘Midnight Cricketer’ (2009) by Stanley Greaves Magazines: ‘Stained Glass’ (2007) by Salvador Ceja (© dreamstime) Publisher Profiles: ‘banjo, flute and fiddle’ by Fran McCann (www.franmccann.com) Catalogue Design: Jeremy Hopes
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