2025 marks ten years of V. Press publishing solo-authored titles and, as part of our celebrations, we're sharing our year-by-year publications over that period.
The press was originally launched at Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2013 with a one-off poetry chapbook anthology before moving on to solo-authored poetry pamphlets in 2015.
Our first solo-authored poetry collection and our first flash fiction pamphlet came out in 2016. There have been illustrated poetry pamphlets, a dual-authored poetry pamphlet and a full-length flash fiction title along the way.
Today, we highlight our 2023 titles and some extra delights from that year!
The Human Portion by Nicola Warwick winner of the poetry category of East Anglian Book Awards 2023
The Beautiful Open Sky by Hannah Linden shortlisted for Saboteur Awards 2023 Best Poetry Pamphlet
This post comes just ahead of National Poetry Day next Thursday (2 Oct).
V. Press editor Sarah Leavesley/James will be in the New Brighton area next week and enjoying the Wirral Poetry Festival that weekend. You can find out more about what's on offer at the festival here. If you're there and spot Sarah -- most likely at the poetryfilm screening, Five New Books event or Where Once the Tide poetry walk -- do say hello!
The Human Portion -- Nicola Warwick -- 1 March 2023
“Nicola Warwick’s poems take place in entrancing, liminal territory in which the human sensibility encounters the natural world. Deep kinship, mystery and otherness are conveyed through acute observation and transformative imagination. The language is precise and often surprises. Take, for instance ‘the sky, red as a swallow's throat’ (‘Late high summer’), or ‘roots easing through earth / were a voice making itself unheard’ (‘And the trees (said)’). These poems reveal a special sensitivity and to read them is to feel our ‘Human Portion’ enlarged. Highly recommended.” Moniza Alvi
“‘How to speak of this’ Warwick asks in these nuanced, thoughtful poems concerning landscape, seascape and wildlife. Encompassing intimate losses of family and nature, the collection delicately explores our ‘egg-tight grief’ in distilled moments of striking imagery and accomplishment. Ultimately, these poems hope that we may find in nature, as ‘The Courteous Farmer’ does, a ‘second heart’.” Heidi Williamson
The Human Portion is very liminal and very grounded.
The Chitterings
for the soft scrape of their claws
as they slip out from under the eaves.
of the little interlopers who stir only
as we are readying ourselves for sleep.
for their ragged shapes to take to the air,
for them to stutter like ticker-tape into the dark.
their squeals and calls, a quiet chit-chittering
as they gather for the off.
that will not silence, suggest I still them
with something like mindfulness.
I watch from the window for their exodus,
count them out, count them all back in.
Braised in Wine -- D.D. Holland -- 28 April 2023
“A book about eating disorders and abuse might sound like a tough read – but, although these poems teeter on the edge of an abyss, they are written with healthy doses of warmth and humour, and an appetite for life that proves moving and uplifting.” Dr David Swann
“Braised in Wine’s evocative, compelling and moving poems whet the appetite, while also exploring how what we eat and drink may feed into other aspects of life – body image, self-worth, relationships and more.” Sarah Leavesley, V. Press prize judge
Braised in Wine is very amusing and very genuine.
Winner of the V. Press Prize for Poetry 2022
Dancing in Babylon -- Elaine Baker -- 17 July 2023
“Situated in the city of the apocalypse, and arranged as a play, this is a gentle and haunting sequence of poems. Within an anxiety-infused landscape of constant peril, Baker’s skillful narrator offers a counterbalance to the darkness of uncertainty. What ultimately triumphs here is the light, joy and beauty of what it is to love and be loved. These graceful, musical and emotionally resonant poems beautifully unfold their story of hope.”
Vanessa Lampert
“These poems are startling in their emotional clarity. They capture the surreal disconnection of lockdown as well as celebrating what a joy it is to be together once more. They are filled with a quietly powerful sense of wonder that is both passionate and melancholy. From tango dancers to taxi cab drivers, they draw us into a world that is heart-breaking in its beauty.”
Aoife Mannix
Dancing in Babylon is very elegiac and very cathartic.
A sample poem from the chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Dancing in Babylon can be found here.
The cabbie (1)
He works nights, passing blue lights. Silence. Blue lights. But the streets are magic after dark.
He doesn’t need Satnav or stars. He knows Babylon’s backstreets like his daughters and sons, like their voices in the morning, their feet on the carpeted stairs.
While she cooks, nags, worries, gets them to bed, pours a drink, watches the news, he criss-crosses the city, office blocks to station forecourt to banks to city outskirts. Fare after fare, the night goes. He doesn’t miss conversation much. He’s learned to read his fares behind the glass like texts – it’s all in the eyes, above the mask. He observes the way they watch empty pavements, traffic lights, like they’re adverts.
He curses the gulls –
fucking birds.
He takes this city, while it’s sleeping, while no one else is looking, slipping lane to lane like he’s a king, and in between, he sings, picturing her warm and safe in his bed, breathing.
He doesn’t know when it will end. He thanks God he is working.
(m)othersongs -- Sarah Doyle -- 11 September 2023
“(m)othersongs is a moving, visceral exploration of the othering nature of un-motherhood. Body-shame, medical misogyny and grief are exorcised in shape-shifting forms with veins of pain running through them, in which everything from cloud formations to sea gooseberries on a shoreline speak of the changing seasons of the human body. This is a world where ‘wooden babies’ and rag dolls are born in place of children, and the womb – a ‘special bedroom’ haunted by endometriosis, fibroids and myths of creation – is surrendered with the mantra – ‘it’s only a pocket, and one you’re not using’. Both heartbreaking and strangely transporting, these are powerful and necessary poems.”
Polly Atkin
“(m)othersongs is one of those rare examples of a collection of poetry that is both moving in content and accomplished in form. Each poem is expertly crafted, with a skilled use of structured form alongside beautifully crafted free verse. This textured and vibrant collection does not hold back, it faces the pain of endometriosis and infertility and holds that pain up to the light as valid experience of womanhood. The poetry world is enriched by this collection, and I shall return to it.”
Wendy Pratt
(m)othersongs is very meteorological and very moonlit.
A sample poem from the chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for (m)othersongs can be found here.
Not Enough Rage -- Gram Joel Davies -- 16 October 2023
“It’s rare for me to recognise, and feel kinship for, a lot of contemporary poetry. I recognise and feel kinship with this. Not Enough Rage is like a series of controlled explosions. Trembling houses. A burning voice. Experience dismantled and sewn back together with glowing needles and a mouth full of stars.”
Bobby Parker
“Like a Dylan Thomas of the age of mental illness, Gram Joel Davies leaps and flies through the world with dark exuberance. These are speakable poems, full of love for unlovable places and impossible people. In touch with but not tied to rap's rhymes and rhythms, this collection, for me, shifts the modern world into the painful focus of real poetry.”
Peter Oswald
Not Enough Rage is very heady and very gutsy.
A sample poem from this full-length collection can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Not Enough Rage can be found here.
Turn Around When Possible -- Martin Zarrop -- 6 November 2023
“Combining a scientific eye with a poetic sensibility (and a sharp sense of humour), Martin Zarrop’s work is thought-provoking and wry. These poems take the long view and they never shy away from difficulty, each expertly using form to amplify content. Turn Around When Possible is an enlightening, enjoyable read.” Helen Mort
“Whether he is looking back fondly on the seemingly mundane details of a working-class childhood or exploring the vastness of interstellar space, Martin Zarrop’s poems are distinguished by their metaphysical wit, humour, and sheer accessibility. There is a mathematical precision to every poem in this collection, a focus on details, that leads inevitably and, with a minimum of fuss, to memorable insights into love, affection, the ineluctable passage of time, and humanity’s place in the universe. Turn Around When Possible is a delight from start to finish and shows Zarrop writing at the height of his very considerable powers.” David Cooke
Turn Around When Possible is very uncertain and very quirky.
A sample poem from this full-length collection can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Turn Around When Possible can be found here.
the grimy windows, as he takes
his medication. Breakfast news
depresses. He sips coffee, guesses
it will rain, decides he must abort
the routine of his daily walk.
The clock is striking eight, then ten.
He’ll find some other way (again!)
to pass the time. Another cryptic?
Out of sight the slow tick-tick
of something drip drip dripping
from behind the bathroom light.
The phone is shrill. Is someone dead?
Hello, Sir – sorry – my name’s Smith.
A class parades inside his head.
You used to teach me in the sixth…
Oh, I recall – it’s thirty years
and I’m still here, but my dear wife…
I only rang to thank you, Sir,
for making such a difference to my life.
Brother -- Sheila Lockhart -- 24 November 2023
“Sheila Lockhart has created something special with this pamphlet. Brother is a poignant study of remembrance but one that manages to be almost joyful in its close observation of this lost life and the still-living world that goes on without it. It is special writing – clear, brightly configured, riven by pain, and perfectly formed.”
Niall Campbell
“These calm and clear-eyed poems are remarkable in their refusal to be afraid. Holding darkness and light in delicate balance, they move from suffering and loss into what comes afterwards and later, finding consolation in the dogged aliveness of the natural world and, no less importantly, in the patterns and shapes of language itself. Sheila Lockhart has written a bold and beautiful book.”
Katharine Towers
The poems in Brother are a very heart-felt and very unflinching consideration of grief and healing after suicide.
