Saboteur Awards shortlisting - update!!!

V. Press is very very delighted to share more on the
two V. Press pamphlets shortlisted in this year's Poetry Pamphlet category for the 2018 Saboteur Award!!!

Both Romalyn Ante's Rice & Rain and Claire Walker's Somewhere Between Rose and Black are in the running for this year's prize.

The Saboteur Awards 2018: Spotlight on the Best Poetry Pamphlet Shortlist is now online here, including details about the two V. Press pamphlets shortlisted

Somewhere Between Rose and Black by Claire Walker is very earthy and very enigmatic - a sample poem and more about the pamphlet here.

Voters' praise includes:

"A truly incredible book of suppleness and sensuality which is lead by a compelling narrative. Beautiful." "Walker is a sensitive and intelligent poet whose lines are beautifully crafted."

Rice & Rain by Romalyn Ante is very rich and very distinct - a sample poem and more about the pamphlet here.
Voters' praise includes:

"Extraordinary poems, powerfully personal, subtly political, metaphysical"

"She is a very gifted poet. Her poems have a great joy to read with a different style of the way she writes and construct hers words beautifully." 

V. Press is also very very delighted to see V. Press poetry designer Ruth Stacey shortlisted for Best Collaborative Work for her poetry duet with Katy Wareham Morris, Inheritance (Mother’s Milk Books).

And Jude Higgins' V. Press pamphlet The Chemist's House was also longlisted for the Best Short Story Collection. (More on the pamphlet here.)

The final winner s for each category will be announced at the special Saboteur Awards festival event in London on Satuday, May 19 but before that the placings have to be decided...by public vote!

Voting starts today Monday, April 9 and ends on Wednesday, May 9. Even if you've already nominated, please do go along to the website here now to cast your vote and have your say in this year's winners!!!

VOTE HERE NOW for  Somewhere Between Rose and Black /Rice & Rain !!! 

Meanwhile, a quick reminder that V. Press is currently open to poetry submissions. (Please check out the guidelines here.) 

Also, the very very exciting V. Press Stablemates reading in London takes place on Thursday, April 26. Book your tickets now at www.jillabram.co.uk/stablemates.

STABLEMATES - APRIL 26

JUST A WEEK TO GO...

STABLEMATES

V. Press is very very delighted to to take part in the monthly Stablemates poetry evening at The Poetry Cafe London on Thursday, April 26. Jill Abrams has invited V. Press poets Stephen Daniels and David Clarke , and V. Press editor and poet, Sarah James/Leavesley to share poetry (& maybe a few words on running the press) from their recent pamphlets and collections: Tell Mistakes I Love Them, Scare Stories, plenty-fish and How to Grow Matches.

Doors open 7pm, poetry starts promptly at 7.30. Venue: The Poetry Café, 22 Betterton St, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9BX. Tickets are £6 in advance from Buy Now button on the Stablemates website here or £8 (cash only) on the door.

Full details also below:

Launching Against the Pull of TIme

V. Press is very very delighted to launch Against the Pull of Time , a poetry pamphlet by Jenna Plewes.

“Against the Pull of Time is a spiritual and physical journey. On the island of Iona Jenna Plewes travels far into herself to come to terms with loss, ageing and mortality. The outer landscape is wonderfully realized. Sea, shore, shells, birds and buildings play a central role in her inner exploration. The immediacy of the pared writing in this sequence, its telling details and the sharing of a deeply-felt experience, draw the reader into Plewes’ journey.” Myra Schneider

“In tender, beautiful and unsentimental language Jenna Plewes takes us on a journey, walking barefoot on wet sand, sitting in a ruined nunnery, musing on the shoreline 'handcuffed to the sea'. it is a long time since I have read a collection that moved me so. One line somehow says it all: 'so many things are precious in the leaving and the letting go'. This is a collection I want to read over and over – also rare these days.” Roselle Angwin

Against the Pull of Time is very very deep-rooted and seamlessly woven.

R.R.P. £6.50

A sample poem from the pamphlet may be enjoyed below.

BUY Against the Pull of Time now, using the paypal link below. 

Against the Pull of Time (including P&P)

Against the Pull of Time (including P&P for the U.K. only) £7.50 GBP Against the Pull of Time (including P&P for Rest of the World) £12.99 GBP

A Thin Place

A hand-span measure where time dissolves
in a turquoise sea.

A cell where your mind squeezes through bars,
spirals the thermals.

Here, ideas hatch like midges in sunlight.
Wind indifferent to everything but itself

will temper you, silence will free you from explanations
and excuses. The chill of rippled sand

will teach your naked feet to walk with tenderness
across the thin-skinned earth.

This place is a heart-squeeze of finding and losing,
where you will walk the machair,

try to snare a singing bird, cage it and learn its song,
where you must set it free.


LAUNCH EVENTS

Friday, 20 April: 5pm - 7pm, Bromsgrove Library, Parkside, Market St. B61 8DA. Welcome glass of wine.

Friday, 15 June: 5.30pm , Harbour Bookshop 2 Mill St. Kingsbridge TQ7 1ED. Welcome glass of wine.

Saboteur Awards shortlistings!!!

V. Press is very very delighted to have not just one but two V. Press pamphlets shortlisted in this year's Poetry Pamphlet category for the 2018 Saboteur Award!!!

Both Romalyn Ante's Rice & Rain and Claire Walker's Somewhere Between Rose and Black are in the running for this year's prize.

Somewhere Between Rose and Black by Claire Walker is very earthy and very enigmatic - a sample poem and more about the pamphlet here.

Rice & Rain by Romalyn Ante is very rich and very distinct - a sample poem and more about the pamphlet here.

V. Press is also very very delighted to see V. Press poetry designer Ruth Stacey shortlisted for Best Collaborative Work for her poetry duet with Katy Wareham Morris, Inheritance (Mother’s Milk Books).

And Jude Higgins' V. Press pamphlet The Chemist's House was also longlisted for the Best Short Story Collection. (More on the pamphlet here.)

The final winner s for each category will be announced at the special Saboteur Awards festival event in London on Satuday, May 19 but before that the placings have to be decided...by public vote!

Voting starts today Monday, April 9 and ends on Wednesday, May 9. Even if you've already nominated, please do go along to the website here now to cast your vote and have your say in this year's winners!!!

VOTE HERE NOW for  Somewhere Between Rose and Black /Rice & Rain !!! 

Meanwhile, a quick reminder that V. Press is currently open to poetry submissions. (Please check out the guidelines here.) 

Also, the very very exciting V. Press Stablemates reading in London takes place on Thursday, April 26. Book your tickets now at www.jillabram.co.uk/stablemates.

Easter News - Submissions and Reviews

HAPPY EASTER & OPEN SUBMISSIONS WINDOW

We're delighted to open our poetry submissions window today.  This year V. Press will have three different submissions windows: poetry (April/May), flash fiction (July) and guest editors (April). Full submissions guidelines and details can be found here, please do read and follow them carefully. Thank you.

REVIEW NEWS

“David Clarke’s Scare Stories (V Press), written from a soldier’s perspective in enclosed rhyme, employing a taut sonic register, impresses with its post-apocalyptic vision of war being made as a film for pleasure. It is a conceit that works as the notion of the viewer and participant are conflated through the use of the first person plural throughout. The natural rhymes and pithy language produce a sense of an emerging pattern for a possible near future.” David Caddy, Tears in the Fence, 67, Spring 2018

V. Press is also very delighted to share that How to Parallel Park by James Davey is the April publication over on Atrium Poetry. The feature, which includes three poems from the pamphlet, can be enjoyed here. The pamphlet is available here. 

Romalyn Ante is named 1 of  '10 Poets Bound to Shift UK Poetry', fourhubs, March 2018. Her V. Press pamphlet Rice & Rain is available here.