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!

Rack Press Poets Read in Wales

Six Rack Press poets read in a special Fifth Birthday event at the Presteigne Festival in Wales on 29th August to a packed hall. Seen here holding the commemorative tile handmade by a local Welsh pottery to celebrate five years of poetry publishing, with which each poet was presented, are, from left to right, Byron Beynon, Steve Griffiths, Nicholas Murray, Ian Parks, Cathy Galvin and William Palmer.

Presteigne Festival Hosts Fifth Birthday Poetry Event

We are delighted to have been invited to host a poetry reading and book launch as part of the 2010 Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts in the Welsh Marches on Sunday 29th August. Many of the sixteen poets published by Rack Press since 2005 will be coming to read and entrance is free. See us on our home patch in Wales!

http://www.presteignefestival.com/event/The_Rack_Press_Poets/15

Latest Reviews

Ian Parks's A Paston Letter is warmly reviewed in the latest issue of Long Poem Magazine where it is praised as "a haunting, elegiac poem" and it is good to see a reviewer paying attention to the poem's form and verse technique and talking intelligently about them. David Kennedy's Mistral is also reviewed in the latest issue of Stride.

Don't forget that you can catch the Rack Press poets live at the Presteigne Festival in Wales later this month on Sunday 29th August. We would love to see you there.