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 2019 titles and celebrate an extra delight from that year!
Michael Loveday's novella-in-flash Three Men on the Edge shortlisted for Saboteur Awards 2019 Best Novella!
On the subject of flash fiction, this Saturday is also National Flash Fiction Day in the UK. You can find out more about some of the day's celebrations here.
Making Waves -- Martin Zarrop -- 18 January 2019
Making Waves Albert Einstein: Science & Life is a pamphlet of poems by Martin Zarrop.
“Don't be put off by the Physics! This poetic study of Einstein's life and work is deeply informed but also witty, varied and often moving. ‘Don't feel sorry for me. / There must be certainty in the world’ Einstein says here, but as he faces the travails of certainty Martin Zarrop ensures that we do.” Jeffrey Wainwright
“Don't be put off by the Physics! This poetic study of Einstein's life and work is deeply informed but also witty, varied and often moving. ‘Don't feel sorry for me. / There must be certainty in the world’ Einstein says here, but as he faces the travails of certainty Martin Zarrop ensures that we do.” Jeffrey Wainwright
“Martin Zarrop's latest pamphlet Making Waves takes a look at the life and times of Albert Einstein and the lives of those he has influenced and touches. The poems here skilfully encapsulate different aspects of Einstein's life, from his work and theories and their aftermath to touching poems about his private life, the woman he married and the child he lost. The writing finds Zarrop on top form, witty and wry, and with a keen eye for details, able to paint an overall picture while still having time to see ‘somewhere between here / and the nearest star: / a single hair - / now found’. Enjoy this wonderful collection of poems.” David Tait
Making Waves Albert Einstein: Science & Life portrays the life and times of a genius with poems that are very passionate and very human.
A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Making Waves Albert Einstein: Science & Life can be found here.
Celebrity
Albert Einstein 1879–1955
When I looked in the mirror, I saw him,
that warm smile below a halo of hair,
the intensity in his brown eyes.
It’s you, I said
but he shook his head with a No,
not me, I’d rather be YOU,
in that strong German accent
I remember from old newsreels.
After that, I became well-known
as an after-dinner speaker
on relativity and gravitation,
reality and the quantum,
philosophy and politics
and how to act disgracefully
with any number of women
who hero-worshipped me.
So much affection, so little time
to decipher the thoughts of God.
In the end they checked my birth certificate,
charged me with Impersonating A Physicist.
The scientists of the world were appalled;
they always claimed I was a mathematician
or, even worse, a kind of philosopher.
The Escapologist -- Jinny Fisher -- 6 February 2019
“These poems, sometimes joyful and sometimes sinister, examine human connection and disconnection. Time traveling between a subjective past and a forgiving present, Jinny Fisher is like the little boy ‘escapologist’ in the title poem: proficient in her craft, and simultaneously tethered and free.” Kathryn Maris
“Jinny Fisher’s poems explore the often fraught intimacies of family life with psychological acuteness and linguistic precision. At times hauntingly stark, at others delightfully whimsical, Fisher’s work is consistently engaged, intelligent, and necessary.
“As the title of this pamphlet suggests, Fisher’s poetry dazzles with its play between restraint and release, form and space. These poems resonate with love, loss, mystery and fable and just as you think ‘the ropes will slip free’, a new theme, a different landscape, a fresh voice transmutes into being.”
V. Press Guest Editor Mary-Jane Holmes
V. Press Guest Editor Mary-Jane Holmes
The Escapologist is very taut and very disquieting.
A sample poem from this pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for The Escapologist can be found here.
Retrofocus
Brownie 127: The Beach.
As we skimmed the deeps, his freckled back was my boat. I felt the rise and fall of shoulder blades under my thumbs, his mouth swivelling into view as he gasped for breath. Look: a squinty grin, a cartwheel, a sandcastle – fortified against the tide.
Asahi Pentax: The Shed.
Dust-coated cobwebs, thick as tea towels, draped the windows. I dangled my legs from the workbench, viced the battens while he sawed, and there were so many splinters to be gouged. Look: a table – sanded and glossed, a captain’s chair, three splay-backs.
Nikon F: The Studio.
A windowless shed at the end of the garden. Only my friend was with him. We all knew there were cameras on tripods, banks of flash-guns, umbrellas to diffuse the glare. I imagine his camouflaged murmurs as her blouse falls to the floor. Listen: Lovely – peep from under your lids. Now – a little smile.
Midnight Laughter -- Paul McDonald -- 21 February 2019
“These are fantastic, absurd, coruscating, disturbing and laugh-out-loud funny gobbets of communication from journeys into that bizarre realm between dream and reality. Brilliant testaments to the power of the human imagination and the mad computer of the brain, each of these little detonations of alluring oddness make the world seem simultaneously stranger and sounder than it is. Superb stuff.” Niall Griffiths
“I absolutely loved Midnight Laughter and will be pressing it upon everyone I know. These are precision cut gems of stories – little shards of darkness, pathos, unexpected tenderness and wicked humour. A beautifully crafted collection.” Catherine O’Flynn
A sample flash from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Midnight Laughter can be found here.
Short Story
One morning at breakfast Pete was a foot shorter than he’d been the night before. His PJs tripped him up as he shuffled through the kitchen. “Watch out Mr Clumsy,” said his wife. He ate his kippers as she talked about the day she had in store; should she purchase him some platforms from the shops?
Next morning he was two feet shorter still, his nose scarcely level with the kitchen counter. He struggled with his kippers, the size of barracuda on his plate. “Eat up,” said his wife, who pinched his cheeks between her fingers, “You’re getting cuter by the day!”
Next morning he was less than two feet tall and wore her blouse as a dressing gown. She spent some time ruffling-up his hair, sat him in a highchair, and flew him flakes of kipper on an aeroplane fork: “My darling Petie Weetie!”
Next morning he was half the size again, and she calmed him with a dummy dunked in kipper juice and spit…
Time shrank. He couldn’t tell how long it was before he was so tiny he could fit inside a capsule, its headache powder contents tapped-out on the draining board ready for his fingernail frame. The trip down her gullet made him squeal, the sound of which diminished to a dot. If you’ve ever wondered what a dot would sound like. It sounds like that.
Checkout -- Kathy Gee -- 1 March 2019
“In a time where high street shops are declining or under threat, Checkout is a timely ode, set in Middle England with a ‘cadenced heart,/ alert to daily rhythms, oiled/ by traffic, chips and friends.’ We can add dogs and peregrine to the series of vignettes of everyday people, caught with a keen ear, passionate not to lose the nuances of a century’s old tradition. These voices are guided by a young narrator, who serves and observes; someone who is on her own odyssey that ventures around the world without moving out of the confines of the cash desk. As people make their daily pilgrimage to this local shop, there are elements of Canterbury Tales and Bukowski flowing through this brave collection.” Roy Mcfarlane
As confident as sugar lumps in Yorkshire Tea, Checkout is very immersive, very real.
A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Checkout can be found here.
Pembe: Snow in Istanbul
Four flights of stairs to a wooden loft.
I flicked false triumph from my paintbrush,
spattered anger over canvas
stretched out on the lime-white floor.
Beneath the frozen sky, I argued,
cut through dead-end debts and lies,
spread ink blots on his frogspawn heart.
A second canvas, white and square,
was laid out like the first, but turned
so every corner pointed at a wall.
I stretched up to the skylight, bent
to fling fresh paint at what comes next.
The brilliant colours furled and landed
where new stories said they must.
The day the sun broke through, I tried
to sell the pictures of my life
to a dealer from the Grand Bazaar.
Enticed by promises of tea,
he climbed the stairs to my attic room
and tried to buy the snow-white, star-shaped
space, revealed, uncovered on the floor.
The boy who couldn't say his name -- John Lawrence -- 31 March 2019
 Heather Wastie “These poems manage the almost impossible feat of being understated yet vivid. In this collection John Lawrence takes us through a landscape of narratives where we can feel life: its little triumphs, its wounds, its quirkiness, its sadness, and its joy. He is also a skilful humourist and it’s a delight to find several poems which showcase his impressive comedic talents. It is a perfect irony that a boy who grew up unable to say his name became a poet with such a compelling and wonderful voice.” Fergus McGonigal The boy who couldn’t say his name is very empathetic and very entertaining. |
Den, Sole Occupancy
I built a den in the living room, just for me.
Minimalist design, mainly blankets and sheets
draped over curtain poles and a golf club.
In the glimmer of a fading Maglite
it’s the echoless drear of autumn in here,
not enough room for a solitary tango
or a quick-fire round of celebrity charades.
I lie on my back, feeling weightless,
stare at the astral alignment of the buttons on her coat,
which doubles as the makeshift door. Now
on with the headphones, so the noise is less black.
Invent a new game – count the buttons on the coat.
See a new something – one blonde hair,
caught in the thread of the button at the end.
Create a new plan – build a den within a den,
then another, and another, and another,
until the last is as small as a jackdaw’s egg.
I’d invite you in, I could unhitch the coat
from the golf club. But we’d only mess it up.
The Neverlands -- Damhnait Monaghan -- 8 April 2019
“The Neverlands is a heart-tugger of a collection. In pitch-perfect colloquial prose, Damhnait Monaghan waltzes us through the sorrows of a poverty-stricken Irish family, who struggle to love each other well. Funny, clever, warm and sad, this is a beautiful book.” Nuala O’Connor
The interconnected stories in The Neverlands are very raw and very real.
WINNER of SABOTEUR AWARDS 2020 BEST NOVELLA!
A sample flash from the pamphlet can be read below. More information for The Neverlands can be found here.
CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK IN PRINT FORMAT BUT AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK IN THE U.K. AND INTERNATIONALLY ON KINDLE through Amazon, including Amazon.co.uk here and Amazon.com here.
Nuala: Dutch Courage
Da staggers up to the school gates at morning break and calls for Nuala. Her stomach is bubbling but she goes over and looks at him through the fence. He smiles and there’s more teeth gone. When he says he’s proud of his Nuala, she pinches her wrist hard so she doesn’t cry. Why does he have to be drunk to say anything good? Sister Angelique comes to lead her away and says it’s Dutch courage. Nuala says she doesn’t know much about Holland and Sister Angelique says actually it’s the Neverlands. And Nuala thinks that sounds about right.
The Protection of Ghosts -- Natalie Linh Bolderston -- 23 April 2019
 “In her first pamphlet, Natalie Linh Bolderston portrays the knowledge and care shared among generations of women in poems at once sensory and tender, vivid and emotive. The Protection of Ghosts is a most welcome debut.” V. Press Guest Editor Carrie Etter The Protection of Ghosts is very haunting and very intricate. This title is now out of print but more information about The Protection of Ghosts can be found here. |
Mingled Space -- Margaret Adkins -- 30 April 2019
 Deborah Alma “These musical poems bristle with tenderness and beauty. Folklore and myth mysteriously evoked in the sumptuous sweep of language, domestic spaces inhabited by vivid characters leap out at you alive with a kind of gentle danger. Beneath this vivid tapestry of poems there is an echo of poignancy, threaded and pure, delivering a wonderful and haunting debut collection.” Roz Goddard “In Mingled Space, Margaret Adkins articulates the concerns of intimacy and how relationships are played out in set spaces, both interior and exterior, and the negotiations people make in those spaces. There is always a keen focus on the capacity to be creative in everyday places; Adkins gives attention to tender details others might miss.” V. Press Guest Editor Ruth Stacey Mingled Space is very redolent and very melodic. WINNER OF THE INAUGURAL V. PRESS PRIZE FOR POETRY!!! A sample poem from this pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Mingled Space can be found here. The Dividing Line Born and raised along the hypotenuse of the estate, his house faced the track. Mind you don’t go off with anyone, Sid his mother used to shout. He didn’t. They lived on the other side of the bridge in houses with the television switched off in the daytime. And where candled air drifted when her leadlight-door opened and shut after her mother said: she isn’t playing out today. * Not until he was fifteen did a vanilla-scented girl come knocking with her bowl of salt. And just like a bowl made of salt bones in his head sunk clarets and corals released on her tongue. He didn’t understand when one day she whispered: Sid, nothing stays the same. * He knew that it did. It does. The rails hum where he stands – chalked and whet in oily-oranged puddles. Heroines -- Becky Varley-Winter -- 7 May 2019
|
John Dust -- Louise Warren -- 7 September 2019
John Dust features poems by Louise Warren, with illustrations by John Duffin.
Louise Warren uses grief as an artist uses a sharpened pencil to delicately illustrate that what we leave, we inevitably return to whether through memories or myth. Nature and Death are dancing partners in this beautifully moving collection of poems which explore the idea of roots in family and place. An earthy reverence combined with the keenest observation brings Somerset alive from the ashes of the past. Here, we find apples, owls, folklore, riddles, hedgerows, all linked by the character of John Dust, who is so much more than mere mortality: “I will be your Silhouette, your Diplomat, your Compass” (‘Swifts’). Indeed, the footnote lets us know that these are all caravans. We are in sympathetic imaginative territory to Jacob Polley’s award-winning Jackself where the reader is engaged and often lulled, only to be taken by surprise. It could be argued this how the process of bereavement works – you think you have arrived at a certain point, only to be off-balanced, but the sense of re-discovery of something lost in these poems, is a joyous reclamation. Many of the poems have found recognition in poetry competitions, but this is more than a collection of standout poems; it is the whole that makes it remarkable. The pamphlet is also illustrated with fine drawings by the artist, John Duffin, which match Warren’s words with their deft yet delicate strokes and serve to highlight the wistful strength of this collection.” Lisa Kelly“Riddles and rhythms weave the wonderful spell of John Dust – Louise Warren's original Somerset legend is a brilliant feat of imagination, and will leave you wanting more stories of this mythical man and his exquisitely off-kilter world.” Kate Garrett
Like a character from a contemporary Somerset folktale, John Dust is very atmospheric and very bewitching.
A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information, a sample illustration and ordering for John Dust can be found here.
The Marshes
In the barn, my sofa stands in its puff of white breath,
heavy, patient, packed in tight with the herd,
waiting. I wait for it.
Downstairs, the afternoon moves heavily around the house,
a washing line turns slowly on its stalk,
the carpet in the hallway runs a sluggish ditch.
Back then, before they built on it, back then
the path stumped short into nettles, just fields,
arm of the sky bent round, empty.
Empty as pockets, empty as churches,
empty as milk pails rusting on gateposts.
I look out the windows milky with flat screens,
empty as ditches,
cold in the kitchen, biting like nettles,
sheeny as hoar frost.
Deep inside the bathroom I undress myself for you,
John Dust.
Down to the sedge and water, down to the beak of me,
sharp in the reed bed, down to the hidden.
I strip the light from my skin until I am overcast,
become cloud cover.
John Dust.
My man under the motorway,
flat out in the dark fields, seeding the hedges,
scratching your chest hair, wispy as larches,
pinking like evening, stitchwort and abattoir, bloody as Sedgemoor,
lipped up with cider, scraggy as winter.
You fetch each room, one by one, back to the marshes.
Plant forks and teaspoons, chairs for the heron’s nest,
propped up and broken,
the sky rusting over, smashed up with egg yolks,
water as mirror, water as leather, water as smoke, as trick,
a light under the door.
I stand in the empty
waiting for nothing.
Birds in the buckthorn, a house full of berries.
The Aesthetics of Breath -- Charles G Lauder Jr -- 14 October 2019
 “There’s an enviable gusto and assurance about this debut, the confident voicing of a distinctive sensibility that deserves our attention. Lauder has a keen ear for the musical and metrical possibilities of the well-wrought line which well serves his deftly rendered lyric style. Particularly impressive are the domestic sequences and longer poems which hold both interest and momentum throughout: an achievement of poetic coherence and craft that can only be accomplished by a poet more than ready to stake a claim for his place on the contemporary scene.” Martin Malone“In his debut collection, Charles G. Lauder is not afraid to delve beneath the surface of white masculinites, unearthing violence and toughness but vulnerability and tenderness also. This means examining his own past in the US; what he has inherited, what he brings to his life in England, and what he finds there. Again and again, poems reveal that his family is his lodestone: ‘We are our elements. I would be lost/without them.’ The Aesthetics of Breath is a rich and varied collection which has love and social justice at its heart but does not turn aside from uncomfortable truths.” Pam Thompson “The Aesthetics of Breath is NOT a breath of fresh air – it is a deep breathing-in of a gas called ‘history’, so that it hurts in the lungs. Be they personal myths or legends of entire nations’ violence, here the vapours of various histories sublimate into Lauder’s vivid solidifications – poems that render the distance and otherness of places and times as touchable and smelt. Some of these poems are ‘stellar gases congealing into orbits’, and they are celebratory confirmations of essential stories we humans need to tell our selves. But be warned: some of these poems cast ‘Hiroshima shadow[s]’ to exorcise our civilisation’s pale myths, its ghosts that too often comfortably haunt us, and our too easy and shallow breaths of memes. At times this book is like opening a grave to find the buried still alive ... and violently gasping out accounts of ‘the ruling passions of the woods’.” Mark Goodwin The Aesthetics of Breath is very personal, yet very eternal. Milton-on-the-Hill And the man spied on the bridal path, shimmering, vaporous, slow in gait like a predator through grass, is black. Parents waiting at the school gate ask, Does he wear a backpack? Our village is tasked with isolation like an open wound wary of infection. A Jamaican lived here for a season, drank in the pub with his white wife’s son. Are you visiting? we asked. Our childminder is on the back lane when the man falls in step, asks her name. He is a carer for a chronic smoker in Norden Heath. Going for a walk is the only way he can breathe. Cuckoo -- Nichola Deane -- 28 October 2019  “Nichola Deane’s imagination has a long reach that pulls the unexpected into line after line. The language, clear yet idiosyncratic, and Deane’s deft touch give these poems ease, lightness and confidence.” Fiona Moore Cuckoo is very sensory and very spacious. A sample poem from this full-length collection can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Cuckoo can be found here. D Day to my maternal grandmother, B.E.H., i.m. i. You tell them then because our planes are flying over everyone and have been since dawn when the engines woke you because their drone note, its guttural swarm hums through your bones and the sky has invaded your ear because even these friendly squadrons seem to have you in their sights because a plague of angels is over you death-birds you will see with closed eyes like eye-flaws or black wizened tears years afterwards because these Angels of Vitreous Dust have shocked from you a blast-wave of grief, a Jericho as you say out loud to your parents’ tightening draining faces all you can smuggle past your shame and your self to reach the lips of the story hoping they won’t do what you know they’ll do when you tell them (haven’t you already packed your valise in the dawn-light–spare underthings wrapped round your shrinking childhood, your foreboding?) You tell them because you, more than many know at seventeen what soldiers do and because you don’t need a Bible to tell you you and your small passenger will both be half-Job, half-Eve in this world ii. Seven months of knowledge hidden under ever-looser clothing seven months of my mother within you, my secret mother, my mother your grief, my mother the love no mother mothered when you could not keep her until I kept the secret of her for her safe within me, until I woke to the sound of the Lancasters, Spitfires and Mustangs within her and dawn-until-midnight mother-grief, like that longest of all days Patience -- Nina Lewis -- 14 November 2019  “The poems in Patience address problems of the human condition with a subtleness in technique, a gentleness in approach and a fresh outlook that avoids the cliché or overstatement such poetic themes can sometimes acquire; these poems are beautifully balanced, carefully crafted and the emotional content is all the more powerful because it is so well weighed. Some of these poems subtly convey the sense of a physical loss, others explore the trials of separation and the difficult adjustment in relationships. Grief is expressed but they also remind us of the power of human connection. Joy is held in our memories; in ‘Signs’, there is ‘the glow of orange even in dark beginnings’. These poems touch deeply and yet maintain a calm and measured face. Nina Lewis holds in her hands cogs of isolation, grief and loss moving along the wheels of love, of hope and of patience.” Julie Boden Patience is very intimate and very fond. The Dark House It started life as a home, until the red bricks, colour of rust, were abandoned. The empty house bore the brunt of nature; tilted slates let water in. It became a habitat for shadow animals, nocturnal kings. At night, the edges of its frame were accentuated by bypass lights: silhouette house, secret of wild hedge. The road beyond the garden never stopped. In sleep I walk the dark house, enter the ash kitchen, feel my way across charcoal tiles, my paper feet never find the rooms, never make it to the stairs. I awake to light spinning my darkened dreams. I keep my eyes closed, until only blue remains. About Leaving -- Ian Glass -- 28 November 2019  Jane Commane “I found these remarkable poems intensely moving. They chart a process of huge loss and the road to recovery. Each individual poem is a small gem and the writing is so beautifully controlled that what I took from the collection in the end was a sense of hope. A really strong first collection. I loved it.” Carole Bromley About Leaving is very quiet and very precise. The Day You Left Walking from one empty room to another, filled with silence after the harsh clatter of diesel and last words, and dust drifting in circles, sunlit, but always falling. With the clock ticking towards home-time. With the sofa you chose moved to where I had wanted it. Somewhere between making a cup of tea and finding your pencilled note: bras should be hand-washed is where the falling stopped, is where I started. |
