Launching Fifteen Brief Moments in Time

V. Press is very very delighted to share the publication of Fifteen Brief Moments in Time, a novella-in-flash by Philip Charter.

“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.

ISBN: 978-1-7398838-0-5

52 pages

R.R.P. £7.99

BUY Fifteen Brief Moments in Time  NOW using the paypal options below. 

Fifteen Brief Moments in Time (with p&p options)

Fifteen Brief Moments... (with p&p for UK-only) £8.99 GBP Fifteen Brief Moments...(with p&p for Rest of the World) £25.00 GBP

N.B. Any international customs/duty charges are the buyer's responsibility.

Flash sample:

Luca Cangemi and everyone he knows will be long dead, but the moment will come. Theoretical physicists believe it will be anywhere from 2.8 to 22 billion years in the future. In that moment, everything reverses.

    The Big Crunch is a cosmological event in our future and our past in which the density of matter grows sufficiently that gravitational attraction overcomes the expansion that began with the Big Bang. Entropy reverses and the second law is broken. Chaos retreats.

    Order is regained as space contracts. Broken rocks reform and decayed bodies reanimate. We live our lives in reverse, unexperiencing everything we did the first time around, moving backwards, shrinking towards birth. Instead of questions about creation, we search for the harbinger of order. Who began this? What is our final form?

    Luca imagines the crowds at his book signings dissipating and the offices of his academic fellowships decreasing in size. Wrong turns are righted and his family grows closer. His briefcase heals itself and he returns it to his mother. Life rewinds back to him as a young boy, unreading the words that inspired him to look for meaning in all of this. If it can all be reversed, are all shared experiences undone? All bonds broken? Luca returns into his parents, then ancestors, apes, microbes, and nothing. The earth, the planets and stars all merge into one perfectly ordered mass.

    Yet, this is not an end, but another beginning in which the universe is reborn in another bang. Galaxies, planets, plants, and philosophy professors will live the same lives as they did billions of years before (and after). The process of positive and negative entropy repeats and we all make the same mistakes again.

Time elapsed: the infinitely repeating cycle of a universe

 

Excerpt from 'The Direction of Everything'

LAUNCH EVENT

Phil will be launching Fifteen Brief Moments in Time with an online Zoom reading and Q & A on Monday, 6 June 2022 at 7pm (London time). Please email him on philipcharterauthor@gmail.com to get the Zoom link. 

Spring offers, Reviews, Events

 

V. Press has two special offers that run until the end of March 2022 - perfect for Mother's Day, treating yourself or as a gift for someone else.*

'Dashing Duets' offer - any two of the eligible full poetry collections for £17.50 including UK delivery only, eligible titles are: knots, tangles, fankles, A Woven Rope, A Bluebottle in Late October, The boy who couldn't say his name, The Aesthetics of Breath, Like love, Unable Mother, Blink , The Nagasaki Elder and Bolt Down This Earth. Please make sure you enter the titles of the two eligible collections you'd prefer in the paypal text boxes when you purchase. Otherwise, you will be sent two picked out by V. Press.

Dashing Duets offer with delivery options

Dashing Duets 2-book collection bundle for U.K. delivery only £17.50 GBP Dashing Duets 2-book collection bundle for Rest of the World £70.00 GBP

1st eligible title choice?

2nd eligible title choice?

'Pocket some flash' offer - choose any one of the eligible flash pamphlets (print versions only) for £7.99 (including p&p for UK-only delivery) and get a copy of a pocket novella (Always Another Twist or Kaleidoscope) included for no extra cost, eligible flash pamphlets are (print copies only): Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, Midnight Laughter, There's Something Macrocosmic About All of This or Hometown. Please make sure you enter the title of the eligible flash pamphlet you'd prefer in the paypal text box when you purchase. Otherwise, you will be sent one picked out by V. Press.

'Pocket some flash' offer with delivery options

Pocket some flash offer for U.K. delivery only £7.99 GBP Pocket some flash offer for Rest of the World £35.00 GBP

Which eligible flash pamphlet?

* Both these offers run until the end of March 2022 (unless stock runs out sooner) and are intended for UK delivery only. For delivery elsewhere, V, Press would advise checking the titles' individual prices, as these may be a cheaper option for international customers. NB Any international customs/duty charges are the buyer's responsibility.

 

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER

V. Press is very very pleased to share details of this spring's novella-in-flash, Fifteen Brief Moments in Time by Philip Charter, which is now available for pre-order.

“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.

ISBN: 978-1-7398838-0-5
52 pages
R.R.P. £7.99

A sample and pre-ordering for this novella-in-flash is available here.

V. Press is delighted to share details of  our next poetry collection, You'll need an umbrella for this by Victoria Richards, which is now available for pre-order.

“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.

ISBN: 978-1-8380488-8-4

74 pages

R.R.P. £10.99

A sample poem and pre-ordering for the collection is available here.

REVIEW NEWS

What love would smell like

"The poems in this debut collection are filled with love and longing, delivered in a calm, wistful tone. It’s a romantic, gentle publication. The female body is always present, often wrapped in sensuous, languid language communicating tenderness and intimacy."

Tamsin Hopkins, Sphinx, full review here.

"Each poem invents its own form with the result that the poems are very fresh. They jump off the page. SK Grout does a wonderful job with this and what I enjoyed most was her ability to hold us in the moment."

Anne Bailey, Sphinx, full review here.

A sample, poem, more information and ordering for What love would smell like can be found here.

EVENTS

Sarah Doyle will be reading from her V. Press pamphlet Something so wild and new in this feeling and talking about Dorothy Wordsworth at an in-person event this spring in Hertfordshire:

Ware Poets, Friday, 13 May 2022, 8pm, at Ware Arts Centre, Kibes Lane, Ware, Hertfordshire SG12 7BS. £5

No need to book in advance, tickets will be available to buy on the door. The event will have a friendly and welcoming atmosphere, with an open mic for those wishing to share a poem of their own on the night. Sarah will be signing books.

Love, love...love our special offers!

 

Whatever else you're doing today, we hope you'll have time to love some poetry and flash fiction. Our Valentine's sample of work from some of our back catalogue can be found here, and a sample poem, more information and ordering of sk grout's recent poetry chapbook What love would smell like here.

V. Press has also put together two special offers that run until the end of March 2022.*

'Dashing Duets' offer - any two of the eligible full poetry collections for £17.50 including UK delivery only, eligible titles are: knots, tangles, fankles, A Woven Rope, A Bluebottle in Late October, The boy who couldn't say his name, The Aesthetics of Breath, Like love, Unable Mother, Blink , The Nagasaki Elder and Bolt Down This Earth. Please make sure you enter the titles of the two eligible collections you'd prefer in the paypal text boxes when you purchase. Otherwise, you will be sent two picked out by V. Press.

Dashing Duets offer with delivery options

Dashing Duets 2-book collection bundle for U.K. delivery only £17.50 GBP Dashing Duets 2-book collection bundle for Rest of the World £70.00 GBP

1st eligible title choice?

2nd eligible title choice?

'Pocket some flash' offer - choose any one of the eligible flash pamphlets (print versions only) for £7.99 (including p&p for UK-only delivery) and get a copy of a pocket novella (Always Another Twist or Kaleidoscope) included for no extra cost, eligible flash pamphlets are (print copies only): Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, Midnight Laughter, There's Something Macrocosmic About All of This or Hometown. Please make sure you enter the title of the eligible flash pamphlet you'd prefer in the paypal text box when you purchase. Otherwise, you will be sent one picked out by V. Press.

'Pocket some flash' offer with delivery options

Pocket some flash offer for U.K. delivery only £7.99 GBP Pocket some flash offer for Rest of the World £35.00 GBP

Which eligible flash pamphlet?

* Both these offers run until the end of March 2022 (unless stock runs out sooner) and are intended for UK delivery only. For delivery elsewhere, V, Press would advise checking the titles' individual prices, as these may be a cheaper option for international customers. NB Any international customs/duty charges are the buyer's responsibility.

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER

V. Press is delighted to share details of  our next poetry collection, You'll need an umbrella for this by Victoria Richards, which is now available for pre-order.

“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.

ISBN: 978-1-8380488-8-4

74 pages

R.R.P. £10.99

A sample poem and pre-ordering for the collection is available here.

REVIEWS

What love would smell like

"It’s this same mix of the personal and the profound that resounds throughout SK Grout’s collection, along with sounds, sights, and sensory language that brings them evocatively to life. [...]  The sensual and the stellar therefore come together in this collection; and as the “rowr” of the bear intimates there’s a refreshing, original style to the writing, too, making this, to quote from the book, “an endless pool of innovation” [...]"

Mab Jones, Buzz, full review here.

A sample, poem, more information and ordering for What love would smell like can be found here.

A Woven Rope 

"I very much enjoyed this collection. Written in three parts, it covers the span of a human life. The first part deals with birth and childhood, the second part comprises a more diverse set of poems and the third part focuses on the ageing and loss of a parent. The title for the collection comes from a line in the poem ‘Self’:

The rim of the world’s a woven rope

you’ll wrap around your wrist to keep you safe.

This couplet seems to me to an excellent example of how Plewes uses simple language in a powerful way. Her visual images are very evocative; they draw the reader in. [...]"

Sue Wallace-Shaddad, London Grip, full review here.

A sample, poem, more information and ordering for A Woven Rope can be found here.

knots, tangles, fankles

“knots, tangles, fankles is a highly ambitious and original collection where Reed takes the complex and detailed research of Sanity, Madness and the Family and transforms it into a multi-vocal poetic sequence which not only engages with its radical theoretical ideas but also speaks to the human distress and pain experienced by some individuals and their families.” 

Jeremy Kearney, The Polophony, full review here.

A sample poem, more information and ordering for knots, tangles, fankles can be found here.

SPRING LAUNCH OF knots, tangles, fankles

Book Launch: knots, tangles fankles by Alex Reed

Friday, 4 March 2022 at 7pm-8-15pm

Venue: Newcastle Recovery College, Newcastle NE1 6UF.

Please join us at this launch event which will include poetry from Alex’s publications plus some musical setting of his poems by Keren Banning.

Admission is free. Donations to the Recovery College (ReCoCo)are welcome.

ReCoCo is an innovative peer-led mental health facility which runs a variety of creative, educational and support-based activities.

For further information contact Alex at: areedhexham@gmail.com

SUBMISSIONS UPDATE

V. Press would like to say a big thank you to everyone who submitted their poetry chapbook samples in the January submissions window.

Editor Sarah Leavesley is looking forward to reading them over the coming weeks, and anticipating some tough decisions!

TO RECEIVE NEWS LIKE THIS DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER USING THE MAILCHIMP SIGN-UP ON THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE OF THE HOMEPAGE.

Starting the new year with some news!

We hope all our authors, readers and supporters have had a good festive period and a healthy start to 2022!

SUBMISSIONS

V. Press will be open early in 2022 (see the dates below) for poetry pamphlet/chapbook submissions from writers who have previously received the V. Press ‘Structuring a Pamphlet’ and used this advice for their pamphlet. Those submitting should have received the ‘Structuring a Pamphlet’ pdf before 9 January 2022.

In addition to following the submission guidelines on the submissions page, please include in the body of your email the date when you received the ‘Structuring a Pamphlet’ pdf and the email address that it was sent to. (So that we can check you meet the criteria for this submission window). Your initial submission sample (as detailed in the guidelines on the submissions page) should be emailed to V. Press (on the email address given in the submissions guidelines) between 24 January 2022 and 31 January 2022.

REVIEWS

What love would smell like

The new year always follows on from the old, and V. Press was very very delighted to see What love would smell like by sk grout feature in the Poetry School's Poetry Books on the Year 2021.

The full books of the year list can be found here, and more information, a sample poem and ordering What love would smell like is available here.

 

Set a Crow to Catch a Crow

"[...] The characters are sympathetically drawn. Mary-Jane Holmes knows how to give a reader sufficient detail to understand a character’s motives but also trusting readers to build their own pictures of who the characters are and their relationships to each other. With minimal sketches each story is fleshed out to not only convey the characters’ lives but also their histories and their futures. The stories explore complex issues, poverty, keeping a family together, keeping relationships going or fresh starts and the fear of beginning again. The decoys are dispatched effectively: some characters are lying to themselves: believing they know what the problem is and not willing to listen and understand the actual problem. Sometimes the decoys lure the character to acknowledge and resolve their problem. The stories in “Set a Crow to Catch a Crow” reward re-reading."

Emma Lee, full review here.

For more information about Set a Crow to Catch a Crow, a sample flash or to order a copy, please click here.

knots, tangles, fankles

“[…] Reed stretches form to allow these multiple voices to shift, in style and font. This skillfully creates a disorientating effect while offering their different experiences and perspectives. Changes in metre and pace increase this effect. To say it is intense is to underestimate its readability […] this absorbing collection is a fine example of how poetry can showcase important uncomfortable issues.” Mary Mulholland, The Alchemy Spoon, full review on page 94 here.

A sample poem, more information and ordering for knots, tangles, fankles can be found here. 

Less than three months old, the collection is already onto a new print run - get a copy while you can!

V. PRESS EDITOR'S NEW BOOK

V. Press is delighted to share the news that our editor's new collection Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic is now available for pre-order over on the Verve Poetry Press site here, and more information about the collection can be found below.

WINNER OF THE CP AWARE AWARD PRIZE FOR POETRY 2021          

Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic is award-winning poet Sarah James’s exploration of 40 years living with type one diabetes, a life-threatening autoimmune condition that is now treatable, but remains incurable. The collection tracks her personal journey from diagnosis, age six, to adulthood, including the high and the low points, as well as the further long-term health risks lurking in the background. These are poems of pain, but also of love and beauty, taking in motherhood, aging and establishing self-identity in a constantly updating world. The route to some kind of acceptance and belonging may be troubled by 'trying to escape' but it also 'holds | more light than your eye | will ever know'. 

"Sarah James’s fine poems are wonderfully abundant in experiment, energy, and expression. She has a remarkable sense for how the self-discipline of illness—like art—can release and shape the language of wonder, wisdom, and love." 

David Morley 

"Sarah James' Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic compellingly conveys the journey of a life pervaded by type one diabetes and the myriad struggles of that hidden disability. It's a world of sunlit fields and night sweats, 'doorstep birdsong' and pricked fingertips, at once arduous and munificent. Always engaging and often moving, James' poems deftly immerse as well as inform, urging a deep appreciation of life's plenty, 'breath[ing] in the sky'." Carrie Etter 

 "These poems speak with such urgency and humanity that we take the deeply researched science (and magic) in our stride, then get pulled up short by its failure to ‘make sense of unfairness’. It’s an exhilarating, poignant collection combining raw honesty with impressive craft. The way ‘the world shrinks’ in personal hardship and the sheer and constant work it takes to open it up again. I feel more awake and alive for reading it." Luke Kennard

PRE-ORDER FROM VERVE POETRY PRESS HERE NOW

Festive greetings!

Launching What love would smell like

V. Press is very very proud to announce the publication of SK Grout's poetry chapbook What love would smell like.

“In SK Grout's debut pamphlet, romantic love between women is both sensual and spiritual. These atmospheric, compelling poems evoke a richly felt and observed sensibility, an experience to relish again and again,  ‘bright full of starwild’.”

Carrie Etter

“What love would smell like expertly zeroes in on the sensual and vibrant rhythms of the body. Porches, couches, cafés and twilit streets are reinvented as poignant sites of intimacy and want. Savouring colour, light, and the ‘sweet, blistered pleasure’ of scent, SK Grout has created an enchanting ‘poetry of simmering’.”
Natalie Linh Bolderston

What love would smell like is very beautiful and very beguiling.

ISBN: 978-1-8380488-7-7

34 pages

R.R.P. £6.50

A sample poem from What love would smell like can be enjoyed below.

BUY What love would smell like NOW using the paypal options below.

What love would smell like (with p&p options)

What love would smell like (with p&p for UK delivery) £7.99 GBP What love would smell like (p&p for Rest of the World delivery) £15.00 GBP

N.B. Any international customs/duty charges are the buyer's responsibility.

To Katerina

even in another time

I will buy too many books

and you will get tattoos of

the eclipse of the moon

etched into the skin beneath

your wrist bones;

I will drink coffee, I will drink tea

and you will bathe in the

first light of the winter sun

spread across the living room floor

like an eagle cradling flight;

I will respond to all emails,

“Sorry it’s late”; and you will

collect juniper berries, periwinkle shells,

cry over oxidised lava rocks burnt black, 

press cornflower petals into books

you will never read;

I will stay home, you will tree-pose;

I will listen to Chopin’s polonaises,

you will dream ferocious big,

think jazz blue,

lap in an endless pool of innovation;

someone, I tell you,

will remember us – you nod: the Internet,

credit history and our names in the sand

 

first published in Banshee Lit

LAUNCH EVENT

SK Grout will be launching What love would smell like with a free online event on Friday, 3 Dec 2021 at 7.30pm. Book for the event on Eventbrite here.

Prize news, and more!

2021 V. Press Prize for Poetry

V. Press is very very delighted to announce that the winner of the 2021 V. Press Prize for Poetry is ‘Creature without building’ by Ray Vincent-Mills, with ‘MIROH’ by Talis Johnson as a runner-up.

A shortlist of four anonymous manuscripts was sent over for this year’s prize by the University of Worcester creative writing team.

V. Press editor Sarah Leavesley said: “I really enjoyed reading this year’s shortlisted manuscripts for the V. Press Prize for Poetry, my congratulations to the writers on their work and crafting.  

“My winner is ‘Creature without building’, a strongly themed, hard-hitting and urgent selection of powerful poems, which don’t shy away from tackling difficult experiences. There is pain and there is violence, but there is also beauty. Striking lines, vibrant imagery, linguistic play and crafting make this an important portfolio that continues to resonate long after reading.

“MIROH also stood out to me as the runner-up because of its admirable range of form, combining recognisable contemporary dilemmas with folklore elements to create new narratives with haunting rhythms. A moving and thought-provoking selection.”

OTHER PRIZE NEWS

V. Press would like to congratulate V. Press poet Natalie Linh Bolderston for her shortlisting for this year's Forward Prize for Best Single Poem with her ‘Middle Name with Diacritics’ (National Poetry Competition).

We wish her luck for the awards ceremony and winner's announcement this weekend. 

Details of her V. Press poetry pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts, can be found here.

V. Press is also to delighted to see several V. Press poets included in Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry 2011-2020.

Congratulations to V. Press poets Nichola Deane and Sarah Doyle, and V. Press editor, Sarah James, who all have previously Forward Prize highly commended poems included in this anthology.

REVIEWS

May We All Be Artefacts

"Chloe Hanks creates strong rhythms in her pamphlet through the repetition of words and sounds as well as her use of form and rhyme. She uses these means to capture atmosphere, and I found it particularly interesting how these enhanced her ekphrastic poems." 

Sue Wallace-Shaddad, Sphinx, full review here.

More on the chapbook, a sample poem and ordering for May We All Be Artefacts can be found here.

To Boldly Go

"[...] This pamphlet grabs my imagination. [...] Martin Zarrop both records mankind’s achievements and connects them to the human spirit with witty observations and surreal imagery."

Maggie Mackay, Sphinx, full review here.

More on the chapbook, a sample poem and ordering for To Boldly Go can be found here.

Something so wild and new in this feeling

"[...]“Something so wild and new in this feeling”" takes Wordsworth’s words shared in private in her journal and brings them to life. [...] Doyle has done a successful job in selecting the phrases that demonstrate Wordsworth’s poetic sensibilities and crafting them into poems that work like a seam of light silvering the birches."

Emma Lee, full review here.

More on the chapbook, a sample poem and ordering for Something so wild and new in this feeling can be found here.