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 are offering two special U.K. poetry pamphlet bundles: 

two 'surprise selection'* V. Press pamphlets for just £10, including P&P in the UK;

three 'surprise selection'* V. Press pamphlets for just £12.50, including P&P in the UK.

These offers run for the rest of this week - so until midnight on Sunday, October 1 - using the paypal links below. (Please take care to choose the correct button!)

2 'surprise selection'* V. Press pamphlets for £10, including P&P in the UK only:

3 'surprise selection'* V. Press pamphlets for £12.50, including P&P in the UK only:

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2017!!!

* Order, then sit back and see which pamphlets we pick out for you!

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.

BUY a copy of The Chemist's House now, using the paypal link below.

The Chemist's House with packing and postage

The Chemist's House with P&P for the U.K. £7.50 GBP The Chemist's House with P&P for Rest of the World £12.99 GBP

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. 

Launching The Nakasaki Elder

V. Press is very very delighted to launch The Nagasaki Elder, a full poetry collection by Antony Owen.

"Antony Owen closely examines the human toll and the indiscriminate effects of chemical warfare in this new and affecting collection.  Owen’s exploration is both tender and melancholic, and his imagery of flesh transmuted is as beautiful as it is horrific.  This book sings and weeps of loss; it is a testimony to the survivors and the wounds that they carry; to the dead and the shadows they leave on the earth.” Helen Ivory

 “Antony Owen is the bravest British poet of his generation. He goes to places poetry doesn't visit and lingering there, crafts acts of testimony and tribute. He does what art is supposed to; raising us the highest so that we can see the deepest. The Nagasaki Elder in its stunning evocation of human suffering is simply his best work yet.” Joe Horgan

“The Nagasaki Elder is a beautiful and harrowing account of a journey through the bombed cities of Japan.  Unlike most poets who hold forth about atrocities, Antony Owen has been there.  He has spoken in depth to the Hibakusha and transformed their voices into some extraordinary poems.  And we must listen, if we don't want our world to end as theirs did.” Merryn Williams

The Nagasaki Elder is very very hard-hitting yet very tender.

Launch details and a sample poem from the collection may be enjoyed below.

R.R.P. £9.99

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

LAUNCH

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.

To feed a Nagasaki starling

She said don’t go to the shadows without water –

I have tried to erase him for sixty-four years

and my wrists are tired;

I have scrubbed the darkness of my son

so he could be buried at last in sunlight.

Don’t go to my son without removing your shoes –

I have tried to bathe him with prayers and carbolic

but he only gets blacker;

I have lived for ninety-nine years

and starlings are beginning to land by my feet.

Don’t wind the paralysed clock,

it is rebuilding the world with seared hands –

I have tried to turn back time

but God will not allow it in Nagasaki;

I had tried to make another child but gave birth to pink curd.

Don’t tell them my name,

and look me in the face when you see him –

I have tried to understand

why ink is only spilled by vaporised kin;

I have tried to write a haiku

for the willow which strokes my son.

Don’t disturb my son

when the raven plays in the shape of his spectre –

I have tried to shoo it away and it quarrels with my broomstick;

I have tried to tell my son that he was ten yards from living.

I have tried to feed a Nagasaki starling

when it drank the black rain;

I have tried to get it to sing so this wraith could be comforted –

 don’t disturb my grave and desecrate me

with twitching shadows.