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 2022 titles!
Fifteen Brief Moments in Time -- Philip Charter -- 30 May 2022
“A book of unexpected insights and extraordinary grace, rippling with loveliness, sorrow, and finesse. All taking place in one room, bound by a single unraveling ribbon of time.”
David Eagleman
“Charter balances the light but rich ideas of philosophy and time with well-drawn if flawed characters, hustling and striving, and wishing for better lives. As one of them says, ‘There are no checks at the door. Anyone can walk in and expand their mind.’ I’m glad I took my seat for this novella and surrounded myself with the sounds and actions of its characters.”
Tommy Dean
Fifteen Brief Moments in Time is a very fast and very philosophical novella-in-flash.
This title is now out of print. But more information about Fifteen Brief Moments in Time can be found here.
You'll need an umbrella for this -- Victoria Richards -- 1 July 2022
“The title isn’t messing about: these poems soak the page with language that is visceral, immediate and sharp. An exciting debut full of vitality, pain and joy.” Luke Wright
“In this gorgeous debut, Victoria Richards asks ‘What are girls made of?’ And the poems answer: cans of Strongbow; ballpoint tattoos; dirty jokes; ghost bikes tied to lampposts; Ingrid Bergman’s eyeballs. All of the above and so much more is contained in this collection. A world of mothers, journalists, children and girlhoods are all drowned or on fire in You’ll need an umbrella for this. Richards tells us these stories with love, humour, lyricism and the sort of eye for detail which leaves an impression on the heart. I will read these poems for years, pass them onto friends: part secret, part gossip, part gift.” Lewis Buxton
“Victoria Richards’s remarkable debut, You’ll need an umbrella for this, is more than a book of poems, it is a best friend. These poems will be there for you in the middle of the night when you are lovesick or broken hearted; they will glance you a knowing look when you need one most and make you laugh even when you think you’ve forgotten how. In these poems, without reserve, expectation or apology, Richards is offering us her heart. Accept it and she will make a fire out of beauty and pain, pour vodka on the flames and dance with you in the light.” Amelia Loulli
You’ll need an umbrella for this is very wild and very windswept.
You’ll need an umbrella for this
I hold on to the handlebars of the buggy
like they’re an anchor, tethering me to the pavement.
Without them I am rudderless, adrift –
my stomach full of metal wool, cutting me slowly.
No one can see me bleeding right here
on the street. They just say, “How’s the baby?”
as my spleen ruptures, my liver withers, twists itself
inside out. My gums shrivel up around my teeth,
which start dropping like rain. They form pearlescent
puddles for you to crunch through. The wave
surges up, up, up and breaks over the berth of my inner ear;
my eyes leak floodwaters, red with the bodies
of billions of crustaceans who meet a slow, wet end.
How ironic – to be a creature born of sea, dead by drowning.
Creature Without Building -- Ray Vincent-Mills -- 8 August 2022
“Creature Without Building is a striking debut publication from Ray Vincent-Mills, a poet of exceptional skill and tenacity. The subtle – at times surreal – imagery only serves to underscore the fragmentation of identity provoked by hostile and challenging contemporary cultural politics. At the same time, the poems contained within are laced through with the rawness of lived experience and the precision of authentic observation. In their work, Vincent-Mills offers readers a lens through which to appraise and re-appraise their own complicity in the construction of a social fabric that so often excludes what it should enfold. I exhort readers to keep their eyes peeled for Vincent-Mills, whose star is sure to keep on rising.”
Jack McGowan
“These poems speak for themselves: bold, bracing, and creating their own style and voice!” Sarah Leavesley
Creature Without Building is very visceral and very captivating.
Winner of the V. Press Prize for Poetry 2021
TRIGGER WARNING: Some of the poems in this chapbook deal with traumatic experiences that readers may potentially find disturbing, including domestic abuse, bulimia, rape, racism and graphic violence.
A sample poem from the chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Creature Without Building can be found here.
It takes two
A whistle directed at a small boy with a clumsy red scooter
has the father’s eyes on me.
His lips snap back to the starting line.
We do not talk,
but his eyes call mine
and I think
there really is something in double takes.
In wondering if I took my time with the head like papier-mâché,
discarded the rest, dangled my fingers in…
What colour could I be today?
The Beautiful Open Sky -- Hannah Linden -- 20 September 2022
“
The Beautiful Open Sky opens with an extraordinary run of poems, heartbreaking and precise, about the damage done by a narcissistic mother. As it progresses, the poems accumulate symbols, becoming increasingly phantasmagorical, before the patterns of a new life emerge as if through broken cloud. It works as a story, direct and emotional, but is also a meditation on how we remember – on the limits of reason and metaphor as ways of understanding the past. This is a fine model for a pamphlet: a focused set of beautiful poems, cunningly arranged, which draw power from each other. A wonderful debut.”
Tom Sastry
“Truths are slippery and sometimes sinister in this stunning exploration of familial relationships by Hannah Linden. It can be hard to know who to trust, or who is parenting whom. But there is beauty here too, and a positivity that shines through despite the odds. Self-reflective and superb, Linden’s use of language is playful and imaginative. I can’t wait to see what she does next.”
Julia Webb
The Beautiful Open Sky is very past and very present.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SABOTEUR AWARD FOR BEST POETRY PAMPHLET 2023!
A sample poem from the chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for The Beautiful Open Sky can be found here.
Child
Snow-born to a drift of a girl.
My hand: her hand, HER hand.
My hand is a doll. Bend this way
bend that. Build snow-men—
coals for their eyes, the bruise
of their stares: boys that are men.
Girl drifts into woman. Mother
me, she sighs; sister me the winter.
Grow. Don't grow. Pick a flower
for a self. Be a bulb in a cupboard.
Bloom me for Christmas. Sip of nectar
that sits with a view of the yard.
Home is the vinegar bottom of a jar.
She births more children, neighbours, sherbets
dipped bitter with liquorice. Today she wants me
film-star, cat-suited in red. Find me a song
she hasn't sung. She jived them orange.
She has rhythm but no time.
She catalogued me a fable, said you will
understand when you are a mother.
Powerless Rangers -- Jack McGowan -- 9 December 2022
“There is such an open-hearted charm, an immediacy and pleasure of recognition to these poems that it takes a moment to realise how they’re working on you. The forensic attention to nostalgia, popular culture as a natural and built environment; what surrounded us and moulded us and exerts invisible influence over us to this day. McGowan is a master of engaging humour and subtle melancholy. I dislike the word ‘relatable’, but I expect that’s the easiest term people will reach for, even as the poems themselves unpick our complex relations to our world.”
Luke Kennard“The poems in Powerless Rangers enchant through their spoken power. They are clear-eyed about what makes us who we are and show true strength through their openness, compassion, and self-knowledge. The humour, language, and energy will win over readers and audiences alike.”
David Morley
“McGowan’s poems are loud, with their energetic wit and playful meanderings, but they disguise a romantic, nostalgic centre and when it surfaces the audience or reader are encouraged to switch from one emotion to another in a second – which is a delight.”
Ruth Stacey
Powerless Rangers is very nostalgic, and very nineties.
A sample poem from this chapbook can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Powerless Rangers can be found here.
We watched the box set of Friends until we weren’t
Our love abandoned us before we did.
Hot coals anticipate cold glimmers
like once fond notes sketched into
the sweat on shared mirrors.
But boardgames became box sets,
watching the things that stitched us scatter.
Like that summer we chased
rainbows in your old Toyota,
trying to find an end. Either.
It didn’t matter.
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