Review news & offers

V. Press is very very pleased to share extracts from a Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine review of Carrie Etter's Hometown.

"Longer pieces hint at deeper backstories; and throughout, the writing is pitch-perfect, with sentences carefully sculpted yet fully alive. The opening flash, 'Downs or Towanda Maybe', showcases Etter's neat line in keeping a narrative fresh... Elsewhere, Etter displays razor-sharp psychological insight...

"Praise too for V. Press – publishing poetry since 2013, they now offer a valuable new platform for quality flash fiction and have produced here a well-designed, well-presented pamphlet.

"... Hometown's stories are the real thing, the work of a skilled wordsmith and witness."

Michael Loveday in Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Vol. 9 No. 2 

A sample fiction and more about Hometown can be found here.


AWARD POETRY PAMPHLET OFFER

As we shared last week, V. Press is very very delighted to have been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Publishers' Award.

The award is a highlight of the poetry pamphlet publishing calendar and runs from July to July.  The pamphlets that V. Press had in for this year are: Alex Reed's A Career in Accompaniment, Nina Lewis' Fragile Houses, David Clarke's Scare Stories and Stephen Daniels' Tell Mistakes I Love Them.

POETRY COLLECTIONS READING

V. Press poet Jacqui Rowe hosts her final Poetry Bites on Tuesday, 28 November, after more than ten years running the Birmingham poetry night. Jacqui will be one of the guest poets reading from her V. Press collection, Blink. The other guest will be Antony Owen, who has been a great supporter of Poetry Bites over the years, and given some memorable readings, both as a guest and from the floor. Antony’s collection, The Nagasaki Elder, has also recently come out from V Press.

Food will be served from 6.30pm and the event begins at 7.30pm. Entry: £5 (£4 concs) including readers. Venue: The Kitchen Garden Cafe, York Road, Birmingham B14 7SA. Please contact Jacqui Rowe (jacquiroweAThotmailDOTcoDOTuk) if you’d like a floor spot.

(Poetry Bites will continue next year in the capable hands of Elaine Christie and Matt Nunn.)

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY (PBS) OFFER

The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce the release of the new look Winter Bulletin featuring exclusive poems and unique commentary from major worldwide poets!

The Poetry Book Society was founded by T S Eliot in 1953 to ‘propagate the art of poetry’. Members get the best contemporary poetry books delivered straight to their door every quarter alongside the bulletin magazine.

To celebrate the new look bulletin, we’re offering V Press Blog readers a special 10% discount rate across all our membership options. Simply enter the code VPRESS at the checkout here. Christmas gift membership options are also available.

The Winter Bulletin will be launched from 7pm on the 8th December at the Poetry Society Café in London. We do hope you can join us for a stellar performance from five internationally acclaimed poets: PBS Choice Sasha Dugdale, PBS Recommendations Paul Deaton, Tim Dooley, Ahren Warner and PBS Special Commendation Fleur Adcock. Tickets are available here.

Michael Marks Awards Shortlisting

AWARD NEWS 

V. Press is very very delighted to have been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Publishers' Award.

The award is a highlight of the poetry pamphlet publishing calendar and runs from July to July.  The pamphlets that V. Press had in for this year are: Alex Reed's A Career in Accompaniment, Nina Lewis' Fragile Houses, David Clarke's Scare Stories and Stephen Daniels' Tell Mistakes I Love Them.

It's been a delight to publish these pamphlets and V. Press is very very proud of all its authors - the press is its writers, readers and all those involved with it, including our fabulous poetry covers from V. Press designer Ruth Stacey.

The Awards will be announced at a dinner at the British Library on Tuesday, 12 December, where Sarah Leavesley will be giving a three minute presentation about the V. Press 2016/17 pamphlet list.

Other presses shortlisted are Mariscat Press, The Poetry Business/Smith Doorstep and Rack Press. The awards are run by The Wordsworth Trust and The British Library, with the generous support of the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, in association with the TLS and Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS), in Washington DC and in Nafplio Greece. 

The judges’ comments include: "The V. Press offering of four remarkably diverse pamphlets included a mix of established and new writers. We fell in love in particular with Alex Reed's pamphlet ‘A Career in Accompaniment’ about looking after his wife - quiet poems, carefully crafted, with enormous emotional heft and dignity. "

To celebrate this shortlisting, all four V. Press pamphlets from this 2016/2017 were available [edited May 2025] with £1.50 off their usual price. [This offer is for U.K. delivery only and runs until the end of 2017, and through the links below only.


FORTHCOMING TITLES

V. Press finishes 2017 with publication of  Claire Walker's second V. Press pamphlet Somewhere Between Rose and Black at the start of December.

2017 has been our busiest year yet, with four poetry pamphlets, three full collections and two fiction pamphlets.

The first V. Press poetry pamphlet for 2018 is How to Parallel Park by James Davey, followed by Jenna Plewes' Against the Pull of Time in summer 2018.

Also for 2018, V. Press has Unable Mother, a debut poetry collection from Helen Calcutt, a poetry collection from Brenda Read-Brown, a flash fiction novella  that draws on the techniques of prose poetry by Michael Loveday and a flash pamphlet from Tino Prinzi.

But the press will be looking for new poetry titles for later in 2018...

SUBMISSIONS NEWS

V. Press managing director and editor Sarah Leavesley was pleased to take part in a short interview with Jim Harrington about the press at Six Questions For... (The questions and answers here.)

Although titles for the start of 2018 have been scheduled,  V. Press is hoping to re-open a general poetry submissions window early next year. The press will be looking for poetry titles for the second half of 2018 and going into 2019.

For more information about new titles and submission windows, please follow V. Press on twitter at @vpresspoetry and sign up for the press newsletters (below or the side-bar on the right-hand side of the webpage).

Launching Blink

V. Press is very very delighted to launch Jacqui Rowe's debut poetry collection, Blink.

“Jacqui Rowe’sBlink shares extraordinary visions of personhood and place, giving voice to the many voiceless figures in her finely tuned ekphrasis and emotive allegorical poems inspired by the likes of Apollinaire, Verlaine, and Lorca. Combined with plaintive elegies for both loved ones and her heartland, this is syntactically refreshing poetry that serves to move and inspire.” Robert Harper

“Sometimes a poetry collection won’t let you put it down. This is one such collection. In Blink, Jacqui Rowe has transcended the mere act of description, lifting the poems from the page with a lyrical palette knife, painting each scene with an intelligent, witty and moving style. This is how to write poetry. I will return to these poems again and again.” Wendy Pratt  

Blink is very very vibrant and mercurial.

A sample poem from the collection may be enjoyed below.

R.R.P. £9.99

Life in a Day

Our day was daffodils. I opened my eyes

in equinoctial dawn, shaped by winds

and cloud, saw buds crack

that would be fruit for our descendants.

No gloom until an evening star

told me I was ageing.

Night born, sun

starved, he was forged

in darkness, swaddled himself

in blindness to sleep, sometimes woke

frozen in memories of the sickle moon.

Yellow afternoon we met and wed,

he showed me chronicles of the asparagus

years, epochs of oysters, powdery

engravings of ancient snow

and something he called roses.

Exceptional reviews!!!

We're very very delighted to share more wonderful reviews of Antony Owen's The Nagasaki Elder.

"Antony Owen’s fifth collection, The Nagasaki Elder (V Press), is one of those compelling slim volumes that reminds you what poetry can do when it confronts the big themes of our times – or any times. Those themes don’t get any bigger than war, and its obscene effects on civilians sacrificed on the altar of geopolitical manoeuvres. What marks out Owen’s work as exceptional is the illuminating perspectives he brings to a subject that is already so well travelled...

"He writes universally, but with an insider’s eye. In doing so, he has written a collection that bridges past and present, and could not be more timely."

Neil Young, The Poets' Republic, Autumn 2017 (The issue containing the full review may be bought here.)

"As the world watches today in apprehension and disbelief as test missiles from North Korea pass over Japan, his motives must be applauded. Owen has taken care to distil his anger and pity. His poetry is not in-your-face protest, but crafted, lyrical, and resonant."

Greg Freeman, WriteOutLoud (Full review here.)

More information about The Nagasaki Elder and a sample poem can be found here.

BUY The Nagasaki Elder now, using the paypal link below.

The Nagasaki Elder with packing & postage

The Nagasaki Elder with p&p for the U.K. £11.50 GBP The Nagasaki Elder with p&p for Rest of the World £16.75 GBP

National Poetry Day 2017 - sample & offers!!!

If you love poetry and you live in the UK, then it's hard (we hope!) to miss that today is National Poetry Day.

This year's theme is freedom, which isn't quite the same as free poetry, but we are offering this 'free' video sample of some of our publications.




The video (created for our submissions window last year) features poetry snippets from Jacqui Rowe's Ransom Notes, David O' Hanlon's art brut, Claire Walker's The Girl Who Grew Into a Crocodile, Kathy Gee's Book of Bones, Alex Reed's A Career in Accompaniment and David Calcutt's The Old Man in the House of Bone (with illustrations by Peter Tinkler), as well as prose from Carrie Etter's flash fiction pamphlet Hometown.

Those who have been following us for a while will realise that these are all titles from before last year's National Poetry Day.

This is because our list has more or less doubled over the past 12 months and V. Press editor Sarah Leavesley has been busy editing new titles.

Our full range of pamphlets and collections can be found in our online Bookshop, along with links to sample poems/flash fiction.

Copies of individual titles can be ordered this way.) However, to mark National Poetry Day, we offered [edited May 2025] two special U.K. poetry pamphlet bundles.

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2017!!!

Review news & Free Verse 2017!!!

We're very very delighted to share the latest reviews - of Romalyn Ante's poetry pamphlet Rice & Rain and Jude Higgins' flash fiction pamphlet The Chemist's House.

RICE & RAIN

"This is a powerful debut that demonstrates a control of language and emotion typical of poets at more advanced stages in their careers. In her editorial blurb, Jane Commane says Ante’s poems are ‘a real feast for the senses.’ Indeed, by focusing on sensory details – from listening to the ‘rattle’ of ‘monsoon raindrops’ and the ‘tarri-tik’ of the ‘hornbill lizard’, to smelling a mother’s ‘tamarind-scented fingers’ – Ante’s work richly exploits sensory awareness of her homeland, The Philippines."

Elisabeth Sennitt Clough, Sphinx, full review here.

THE CHEMIST'S HOUSE

"Jude Higgins has created a particular rendition of the universal experience of childhood and adolescence, a microcosm explored with a light but thorough touch, and in particular through taste and smell."
Cherry Potts, Sabotage Reviews, full review here.

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 30, FREE VERSE, LONDON 

This year’s Poetry Book Fair takes place on Saturday, September 30 at Conway Hall in London and I will again be taking V. Press.

As well as a stand, this year we also have a V. Press reading by Stephen Daniels and Nina Lewis at 3pm at the GARDEN CAFE in RED LION SQUARE.

“Unbroken : V. Press poets celebrate connection/disconnection. Stephen Daniels reads from ‘Tell Mistakes I Love Them’, exposing social nerves and poking at the wounds with very vulnerable and very poignant poems.

Worcestershire poet laureate Nina Lewis offers a very authentic and very fervent glimpse of 'Fragile Houses' – tender and sharp snapshots of people, places and memories carried through life.”

The fair itself is free to enter and is open to the public from 11am - 6pm, with an Evening Do from 7pm onwards, at Conway Hall (25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL).

The Nagasaki Elder - review news!!!

We're very very delighted to share not just one but two reviews of Antony Owen's very very hard-hitting yet very tender The Nagasaki Elder.

The collection was only published last week and already has reviews in The Morning Star and the Hong Kong Review of Books.

“The Nagasaki Elder (V. Press, £9.99) is Owen’s fifth collection of poems, and his best yet. The book has the inspired ferocity and prophetic fury of those British poets like Edith Sitwell, Randall Swingler, EP Thompson, James Kirkup and Adrian Mitchell who have protested so eloquently against nuclear weapons. There are some fine individual poems here, notably ‘How to survive a nuclear winter’, ‘To feed a Nagasaki starling’ and ‘The stars that wandered Hiroshima’. One of the most memorable is ‘The art of war’”
Andy Croft, Morning Star (Full review here.)

"The poetry in this book is stark and vivid. Owen does not mess about, casting solid images, the burnt shadows of the victims, and more pertinently the survivors who bear witness to these awful events. Antony applies presence and absence, the point of impact contrasted with the eerie stillness that follows flattened earth and muted lives. I particularly enjoyed the Senryu poems, that apply a haiku-like form to leave powerful and indelible images that haunt you long after the poem has been read and absorbed."
Adam Steiner, Hong Kong Review of Books (Full review here.)

Buy The Nagasaki Elder now, using the paypal link below.

The Nagasaki Elder with packing & postage

The Nagasaki Elder with p&p for the U.K. £11.50 GBP The Nagasaki Elder with p&p for Rest of the World £16.75 GBP

TONIGHT'S LAUNCH EVENT

The Nagasaki Elder will be launched on Thursday, September 7 at Inspire Bar (Christchurch Spire, New Union St, Coventry CV1 2PS) from 7.15pm to 9.15pm.

More about the collection and a sample poem may be enjoyed here.