Launching About Leaving

V. Press is very very delighted to announce the publication of About Leaving, a debut poetry pamphlet by Ian Glass.

“Ian Glass writes compellingly and beautifully about real life, with all its knots and twists and unexpected turns. He has an instinctive feel for a poem’s texture, its grain and the planed faces as well at what lies beneath the veneer, and has the measure of how the ordinary transforms itself through finding shape in language. These poems are clear, tender, often moving – but do not assume that they lack heft in their gentleness of approach. As Glass himself notes in the closing poem, ‘all that will remain is light’ – these poems are not afraid to throw their beam of searchlight clarity and bring intense experiences of loss and recovery into focus.”
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.

ISBN: 978-1-9161096-1-2
36 pages
R.R.P. £6.50

A sample poem from About Leaving may be found below.

BUY About Leaving NOW using the paypal buttons (with delivery options) below.

About Leaving (including P&P/delivery options)

About Leaving (including P&P for the U.K. only) £7.50 GBP About Leaving (including P&P for Rest of the World) £12.99 GBP

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.

Winter News & Reviews

NEW TITLES




With October and November, the exciting launch of  several new titles: The Aesthetics of Breath, a debut full collection by Charles G Lauder Jr; Cuckoo, a debut full collection by Nichola Deane; Patience, a new poetry pamphlet by Nina Lewis; About Leaving, a debut poetry pamphlet by Ian Glass. (Click on the titles for endorsements, sample poem and ordering.)




REVIEWS

The Protection of Ghosts

"[...]Bolderston's poetry transforms history into the personal, a seamless flux of voices and multilingual expressions. Tender yet unflinching, these poems tell of survivors of atrocities, armed with knowledge and love."

Jennifer Wong, The Poetry Review, full review of this "poetic testimony" in Vol 109, No 3, Autumn 2019.

"Family and inheritance are recurrent motifs in Natalie Linh Bolderston's wonderful debut pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts, [...] This passage exemplifies Bolderston's empathic vision, which infuses all of the poems. It also demonstrates her poetic style, which abounds in gorgeous sensual detail, even when describing something as painful as forced migration. [...] Boldertston is admirably at ease with uncertainty – hers is a poetics steeped in the imagination, which deals in fragments and partial knowledge."

Sarala Estruch, Poetry London, issue 94.

"Natalie Linh Bolderston’s debut pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts (V. Press, 2019), is an exquisite lyrical exploration of the question: what does it mean to live as plurality? It examines how our identities are impacted not only by the stories we inherit, but in how they are told and retold, how they bloom and how they rupture—what they capture and what, despite our very best efforts, will always elude us. [...]

"It is the richness of this interplay between instance and imagination that makes The Protection of Ghosts so compelling. Multiplicity is both metaphorically and imagistically examined. [...]

Alycia Pirmohamed, amberflora, full review here.

"The Protection of Ghosts is deceptively slender; the poems within carry more heft than the size of the pamphlet suggests. Every poem crafted to bear being read more than once and each reading yields a new discovery."
Emma Lee, Sabotage Reviews, full review here.

More information about The Protection of Ghosts, a sample poem and ordering can be found here.


Cuckoo

"[...] Nichola Deane’s work is sensory, vividly bringing alive her subjects. The idiosyncrasy is complementary and not whimsical. The poems wear their craft lightly and give the reader space to engage with and interpret them."

Emma Lee, full review here.

More information about Cuckoo, a sample poem and ordering can be found here.

Checkout

“Kathy Gee’s pamphlet is different. Set in a small shop, the collection is presented through the eyes of Nona, the reluctant shop assistant. Nona introduces each of her customers with a piece of 100-word flash fiction, before the customers tell us about themselves in a poem.
“This device enables Gee to create dissonance between the customer’s views of themselves and Nona’s own perceptions of them. The mismatch between Nona’s view and reality underpins particular poignancy in some poems. […]

“Nona and her customers are everyday heroes.”

Rennie Halstead, OPOI (One Point of Interest) review, Sphinx, full review here.

More information about Checkout, a sample poem and ordering can be found here.

John Dust

"In this lovely pamphlet — beautifully illustrated too with prints that complement the poems well — the poet, Louise Warren, creates a vivid world where indoors and outdoors bleed into each other, and this mythic figure John Dust gallops about his business. [...]
"The result is a rich, stitched mesh of a world captured on — or more precisely in — its own terms. ‘Come up by coach, by train, come up by Jack the Treacle Eater’, she invites in ‘Town’; sure enough, her language winds me in."

Charlotte Gann, OPOI (One Point of Interest) review, Sphinx, full review here.

More information about John Dust, a sample poem, illustration by John Duffin and ordering can be found here.



Heroines: On the Blue Peninsula

“Varley-Winter has an eye for picking out details which made me pause, reminding me of the delicacy and strangeness of nature [...] Rather like putting a shell up to your ear, you can hear the ocean through the words.”

Nell Prince, OPOI (One Point of Interest) review, Sphinx, full review here.

Becky Varley-Winter talks about the pamphlet and some of her inspiration here.

More information about Heroines, a sample poem and ordering can be found here.


These nights at home

“This collection is a powerful account of a life changing bereavement. It moved me deeply, resonating with my personal experience.
“[..] Using white space, sparse lines, couplets, lists, prose and short sequences and a meditative pace, Reed infuses his writing with a persistent sense of loneliness, a wash of grief and a quest for the parted. [...]
“The pamphlet successfully expresses this most personal challenge. The world keeps spinning and yet, for the narrator, it brims with the beloved’s existence in dreams, in hauntings, repeat sightings, in voids and lonely spaces, reminiscent of a Hopper painting.”

Maggie Mackay, OPOI (One Point of Interest) review, Sphinx, full review here.

More information about These nights at home, a sample poem and ordering can be found here.

Three Men on the Edge

“[…] these individual pieces are often entertaining, engaging, and/or moving. What’s more, their open-endedness leaves the reader some pleasing space for speculation. [..] This impression of dislocation carries over into much of the writing which has a dream-like and out-of-time quality. […] this is an original, well-crafted and enjoyable book.”

Michael Batholomew-Biggs, London Grip, full review here.

“Michael Loveday’s searing observation of loneliness and unspoken desire are subtly interwoven in this collection […] They are heart-rending stories of remoteness. […] Loveday’s languid and dexterous language floats from the page […] Each man’s life is tenderly drawn, gently exposed, and you feel their sadness. Three Men on the Edge is an extremely moving novella.”

Jacci Gooding, TSS Publishing, full review here.

“In a series of vivid, precisely crafted, breviloquent fictions, Loveday casts the spotlight on three men in difficult straits who live in the ‘edgelands’ in and around Rickmansworth.
“[…] So, emptiness, sadness, meaninglessness, madness, an outer suburbia where it seems always to be drizzling. But in that mysterious transformation that only art can achieve – a pleasure to read.”

Robin Thomas, Envoi 183, full review in the journal.

More information about Three Men on the Edge, three sample flash fictions and ordering can be found here.

The Neverlands

"a stunning, layered collection […] Damhnait Monaghan is an exceptional storyteller. This collection of stories is extremely tight and the narrative thread never wavers. Her use of voice is brilliant. […] The language is beautiful and haunting, a perfect blend of sadness, bitterness, and regret. […] The Neverlands is a wonderful story of sacrifice, love, and redemption. The journey is heartwrenching and tragic, but the moments of hope and salvation that shine through leave a sweet taste with the reader."

Amanda McLeod, Amanda McLeod Writes, full review here.

More information about The Neverlands , a sample flash fictions and ordering can be found here.

Midnight Laughter

"Midnight Laughter largely succeeds in blending the seemingly antithetical styles of horror and humour. While this is not a unique achievement, McDonald manages to tell original tales within the genre."

Rhys Knapman, Sabotage Reviews, full review here.

More information about Midnight Laughter, a sample flash fictions and ordering can be found here.

The Chemist's House

"[…] Higgins populates the texts with memorable scenarios and folkloric vignettes. […]
" It is pleasing that publishers such as V exist. It is similarly pleasing that quality flash fiction such as the pieces in The Chemist’s House are available. More strength to V and more strength to Jude Higgins. I look forward to reading more."
Andrew Taylor, The Ofi Press Magazine, 64. The full review (page 36), with more on Jude Higgins’ eye for detail and her skill in keeping the reader focussed can be found here.

More information about The Chemist's House, a sample flash and ordering can be found here.


COMING SOON

A sneak preview of two 2020 collections, forthcoming in January 2020 (I, Ursula by Ruth Stacey) and May 2020 (A Bluebottle in Late October by John Wheway)!







SUBMISSIONS & NEWS OF OTHER FORTHCOMING TITLES

All of the submissions under consideration by V. Press over the summer should have now received a response.

As well as the last titles from our initial 2018 submissions window, we have Diane Simmons' flash fiction novella An Inheritance lined up for next year. We are also working on a poetry pamphlet Winter with Eva by Elaine Baker, a joint poetry pamphlet from V. Press poets Claire Walker and Charley Barnes and a new collection from V. Press poet Jenna Plewes.

We're delighted to announce too that Carrie Etter will be guest editor for a striking poetry pamphlet by Miranda Lynn Barnes.

With the pamphlet by V. Press Prize for Poetry 2019 winner Kelly Williams also scheduled for next spring, it's already looking set to be a great 2020!!!

EVENTS

OTHER NEWS & ADVANCE NOTICE ON V. PRESS HOLIDAYS IN 2020

For the first time since V. Press started publishing solo poetry pamphlets, then also collections and flash fiction titles, editor Sarah Leavesley will be taking some months out - January 2020, partly for judging the Against The Grain Poetry Press  poetry competition, and December 2020 for a writer residency in Latvia.

Someone will be taking on the posting out of individual orders made from our website or through Amazon, so the public and readers should notice little difference, except possibly a marginally slower than usual posting out.

However, V. Press will not be responding to general email, marketing requests, bulk orders, The Reading Room enquiries etc during these periods. We thank you very much in advance for your understanding.

Launching Patience

V. Press is very very delighted to announce the publication of Patience, a pamphlet of poems by Nina Lewis.

“Patience opens with a watch being dissected, laid bare on a table with the delicacy and patience of a dedicated craftsman. This collection is a reverence to time and where memories lie in places, objects, a lover’s touch, shipping forecast or in a mother counting for days. Nina Lewis is deft and sensitive in speaking of grief and loss, of love and desire, of caring for the elderly. Her words and phrases are weighted with a lightness of touch, capturing golden moments with a watchmaker’s accuracy. She is determined to create a living record, to have the last say in the presence of illness and death, leaving us with codes for the broken and an encouragement ‘to learn the art of waiting’.” Roy McFarlane

 “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.

ISBN: 978-1-9165052-9-2
32 pages
R.R.P. £6.50

A sample poem from Patience can be enjoyed below.

BUY Patience NOW using the paypal buttons (with delivery options) below.

Patience (including P&P/delivery options)

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

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.