Poets Gather in North London

London's achingly trendy Exmouth Market was the scene of a highly successful poetry publishers fair on Saturday brilliantly organised by poet and publisher Charles Boyle of CB EDitions and Rack Press was one of the poetry publishers displaying their wares. There were readings throughout the day and here are four Rack Press poets, from left to right, Roísín Tierney, Katy Evans-Bush, Nicholas Murray and Christopher Reid.

Poetry Book Fair in London: Be There!

Rack Press will be one of 23 small poetry presses taking part in a special poetry book fair in London this coming Saturday 24 September 2011 from 10 am to 5 pm and you are invited to come and meet us.

It takes place at Exmouth Market Centre, Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QE and it will be opened by Michael Horovitz and entry is free and there are readings throughout the day. A programme will be available with new work by Simon Armitage and others. The 23 presses taking part are: Anvil, Arc, Carcanet, CB, Sidekick, Ward Wood, Waterloo, Waywiser, zimZalla editions, Donut, Egg Box, Enitharmon, flipped eye, HappenStance, if p then q, New Departures, Nine Arches, Penned in the Margins, Rack Press, Reality Street, Salt, Shearsman, Shoestring,

The book fair celebrates the variety and vitality of contemporary poetry and is a unique event. We look forward to seeing you.

Get Your Copies of "Airs and Ditties" Before Prom Premiere

There are still some copies left of Christopher Reid's Airs and Ditties of No Man's Land the poem whose setting by Colin Matthews received its world premiere at the BBC Proms on Sunday 21 August.

Just click on this page to order online. Please remember to add an additional £1 if you are an overseas customer.

Ian Parks at Leeds Poetry Festival

Rack Press poet, Ian Parks ("A Paston Letter") is reading at the first Leeds Poetry Festival on 24th September and also giving a talk that day on the love poetry of Robert Graves.

Ian's new collection The Exile's House is due from Waterloo Press later this year and he is currently editing an anthology of contemporary Yorkshire poetry A Version of the North for Five Leaves.

Katy Evans-Bush Reading at Swansea

Rack Press poet Katy Evans-Bush whose pamphlet, Oscar & Henry is almost sold out, is reading on 28th July at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea from her new Salt collection, Egg-Painting Explained so get along there, folks.

To quote the Poetry Library: "A double-header to celebrate Tamar Yoseloff and Katy Evans-Bush's new books from Salt. Yoseloff's fourth collection, The City with Horns, features a sequence of poems inspired by Jackson Pollock. She holds degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Glamorgan and Aberystwyth University. Evans-Bush is a Welsh-American poet, blogger and communications specialist, who'll be reading from her second full collection, Egg Printing Explained."

To book tickets ring the Dylan Thomas Centre

on 01792 463980

Full Price £4 Concessions £2-80

Swansea PTL £1-60.

Dylanthomas.lit@swansea.gov.uk

www.dylanthomas.com

Get Real! Gets the Dramatic Treatment

Actors from the Iris Theatre Company, directed by Daniel Winder, will be performing an evening of new dramatic verse tomorrow night (9th June) in the open air at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, concluding with a performance by the company’s actors Ben Crystal and Matthew Mellalieu of Nicholas Murray’s verse broadside, Get Real! published as a pamphlet by Rack Press earlier this year.

“Political poetry, particularly the art of poetic pamphleteering, was once a staple of English literary and political life,” Nicholas Murray said this week. “But in this country there has been a tendency to think poetry and politics exist in separate spheres which would be a surprise to Milton, Marvell, Yeats or more recently Tony Harrison – not to mention a range of major twentieth century European poets. It’s time for poets to engage once again with the rough and tumble of politics.”

Nicholas Murray’s Get Real!, has already attracted praise from the Times Literary Supplement for its skilful verse technique, and it is a pamphlet-length poem written in regular rhyming stanzas reminiscent of the the famous verse letters of Robert Burns, a form revived in the 1970s by poets John Fuller, James Fenton and Clive James.

The hard-hitting broadside attacks the coalition’s politics and in particular lampoons the failed Liberal Democrat opposition to student tuition fees.

Since Get Real! appeared in February this year the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has also broken with the polite consensus by publishing in May her poem attacking the cuts to the Poetry Book Society, providing further evidence of the new willingness of poets to engage directly with contemporary politics.

World Première of Christopher Reid/Colin Matthews Collaboration

This year's BBC Prom's season programme has just been announced and Rack Press is very pleased to announce that the Prom on Sunday 21st August will feature the world première of Colin Matthews' "No Man's Land", a twenty minute piece based on Christopher Reid's poetry pamphlet, Airs and Ditties of No Man's Land, published by Rack Press in February.

The pamphlet can be ordered directly from us or it can be bought at the London Review Bookshop in London.

Defend the Poetry Book Society

Rack Press was one of 39 British poetry publishers who signed a letter to the Arts Council of England protesting against the total withdrawal of funding from this excellent body. Short-sighted, questionable and partial, the decisions of the ACE are not in the interests of the arts in this country.

New Rack Press Poets of 2011 Launched in London

Over 80 people packed into the Marchmont Centre in Bloomsbury for the launch on 22nd February of pamphlets by the four Rack Press poets of 2011: Angela Topping, Roísín Tierney, Christopher Reid and Nicholas Murray.  With readings, wine and conviviality it was a very pleasant evening and the poets are selling well.  There are still a few sets of all four signed by the authors at a special launch price of £12 so order right away 'to avoid disappointment'.

Rack Press Poets Launched in Bloomsbury

The four Rack Press poetry pamphlets of 2011 are being launched in London on Tuesday 22nd at 18.30 at the Marchmont Centre in Bloomsbury (62 Marchmont Street, London WC1). This will be an occasion to hear all four poets, Christopher Reid, Roísín Tierney, Angela Topping, and Nicholas Murray reading from their work. There will be refreshments, pamphlets on sale, and a party atmosphere so cut along and hear some of the best.

Full details of the titles and how to order them are available elsewhere on this blog.

Get Real Gets the TLS Scrutiny

The second of the four new Rack Press pamphlets for 2011, Get Real!, by Nicholas Murray, a scathing verse broadside against the coalition Government, is mentioned in today's Times Literary Supplement where the diarist "J.C." confesses that: "So skilfully does he weave his argument through the aabcccb arrangement that it is difficult to quote effectively: the first four stanzas comprise a single sentence, for example."

In spite of the difficulty, however, he manages to quote some lines and this notoriously stringent, if not acerbic, critic, seems, we think, to like it. If you want to read the whole thing a remedy is at hand: send £4 to Rack Press, The Rack, Kinnerton, Presteigne, Powys LD8 2PF (p&p free). In London you can buy it over the counter at the London Review Bookshop or Bookmarks in Bloomsbury Street.

Rack Press Poets on the March

Over at the excellent blog of poet Katy Evans-Bush is a nice, and characteristically well-informed description of our new offerings for 2011. We were pleased to publish Katy's Oscar & Henry last year and we hope she likes the new batch. See previous post for how to order.

New Titles for 2011 to be Launched in London

Four characteristically rich and varied pamphlet collections from Rack Press are launched in London on 22nd February:

Airs and Ditties of No Man’s Land by Christopher Reid

Dream Endings by Roísín Tierney

Catching On: An Elegiac Sequence for Matt Simpson by Angela Topping

Get Real! by Nicholas Murray

To order simply send a cheque for £4 per pamphlet made payable to Rack Press (postage and packing free) to Rack Press, The Rack, Kinnerton, Presteigne, Powys LD8 2PF.

Four New Titles for 2011

Four new pamphlet titles from Rack Press will be launched next month and will be announced shortly.

Watch this space!