Rack Press Wins Michael Marks Award

Sue Murray (Rack Press), Geraint Morgan and
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch at the Michael Marks Awards,
25 November at the British Library.

We are very pleased to say that we won the Michael Marks Award for Publisher of the Year  on 25th November at a ceremony at the British Library.  The Michael Marks Awards have become over the past few years the principal award for poetry pamphlet publishers in the UK and have played a major part in the current renaissance of this very special form of poetry publishing which unites experienced and debut poet.   Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, whose excellent Rack Press pamphlet, Lime&Winter was shortlisted for the individual pamphlet award (and which can be ordered online here) gave a characteristically spirited and accomplished reading from the pamphlet. The eventual winner of this category was Laura Scott for What I Saw (Rialto).

Rack Press publisher, Nicholas Murray, speaking at the Awards said:

Rack Press is a Welsh poetry imprint that next year celebrates its 10th birthday when we will have published 34 poets.  We are planning for 2015 readings, events and a full programme of new pamphlets.  It promises to be an exciting year for the Press.

Our philosophy is to publish high quality, well-crafted poetry in attractively designed editions and to ensure that we always publish side by side experienced poets and debut collections and that we have equal numbers of male and female poets.  

We favour poetry that engages with the world of politics and current events as well as lyric poetry and, as the only Welsh pamphlet publisher ever to have been shortlisted in any category since the inception of this Award, we take very seriously our commitment to Wales and to the Welsh poetry and cultural scene.

Like most poetry publishers we have found that we have to work harder than ever to maintain sales.  There is an interesting mathematical relationship between the increase in the numbers of people writing poetry and the numbers of people buying it.

This year we published six pamphlets, and launched a new venture of short prose books under the imprint Rack Press Editions, the first title of which, Bloomsbury and the Poets, described by The Spectator as ‘a delight’, has sold well and has provided the Press with a welcome extra revenue stream.

Rack Press has taken part in readings in Wales and elsewhere and we are keen to do everything we can to widen the audience for serious poetry.

In the end our publishing philosophy is about bringing quality work to the attention of as many people as possible, in attractive form, with an emphasis on craft, and with a belief in the poetry pamphlet not as a ‘nursery slope’ publication nor as a sideline for established poets but as a significant genre in its own right that presents coherent short collections, themed sequences, and individual long poems in a perfectly satisfying format.