Autumn news, reviews & National Poetry Day offer

V. Press is delighted to start into Keats' "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" with a lovely article in the Sept/Oct/Nov issue of Mslexia.

Editor and managing director Sarah Leavesley was asked to take part in an interview for the magazine's 'Indie in the news' section, focussing in particular on Natalie Linh Bolderston's pamphlet The Protection of Ghosts. 

Natalie received an Eric Gregory Award earlier this year with an application including five poems  featured in her V. Press pamphlet.The article also includes background on the press and our submission process. 

This issue of Mslexia (87) can be found here and Natalie's pamphlet, which was guest-edited by Carrie Etter, here.

This issue of Mslexia also features an article about the V. Press title  The Neverlands by Damhnait Monaghan, which won the Saboteur Awards 2020 Best Novella  Award. Yvonne Battle Felton's article 'Breaking the mould' combines review and writing exercise. Quotes from it can be found in the review section below.

Competition Joy

Congratulations to V. Press poet Ruth Stacey, whose collection I, Ursula has been longlisted in the Poetry Book Awards 2020!

More about the awards here. A sample poem, more about the collection and ordering of I, Ursula can be found here.

REVIEWS

The Neverlands

“This stunning award-winning novella is told through a series of inter-connected flash fictions. Each is a self-contained burst of character, setting and tension. Alone, each piece is poignant and sharp; together they produce a compelling narrative.[..]"

Yvonne Battle Felton, 'Breaking the mould', Mslexia

A sample flash, more information about The Neverlands and ordering for the eBook can be found here.

An Inheritance

“Diane Simmons expertly uses flash fiction pieces to capture the complexities one family experiences over four generations in her novella, An Inheritance (V. Press). Each fictional piece chronologically charts significant moments for the characters as they navigate their lives—both independently and as a family. The collection as a whole is a dramatic family saga that interweaves issues of class, familial obligations and legacy. […]

“Entertaining and powerful, Diane Simmons’ publication, An Inheritance, is a comprehensive collection of flash fiction stories that transcend place and time. […]”

Mikiko Fukuda, Sabotage Reviews, full review here

A sample flash, more information and ordering for An Inheritance can be found here.

Ynygordna

"[...] The juxtaposition of hate and anger with the safety of pure, fluid love, is what sustains this work: I felt the contrast drew me in, and amplified the anguish communicated through the poems.

[...] There is much that is strong and powerful in Ynygordna, which explores many contrasts, not just between love and hate, but also the battle between persecution and acceptance — ignorance and understanding."

Vic Pickup, OPOI review on Sphinx Reviews, full review here

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

Hierarchy of Needs: A Retelling

"The poems in this noticeably direct and unpretentious pamphlet are framed by two pyramid-structured ‘hierarchies of need’ modelled after Abraham Maslow’s 1943 theory of human motivation. One pyramid shows nature’s basic, psychological and growth needs; the other does the same for ‘21st century humans’. The pamphlet sheds light on — and examines the symbiotic relationship between — the two sets of needs. [...]

"This pamphlet is a timely poetic reminder that all life needs to be tended respectfully, by ourselves as well as by others."

Tim Murphy, OPOI on Sphinx Reviews, full review here

A sample poem, more information and ordering for Hierarchy of Needs: A Retelling can be found here.

Making Tracks

"I enjoyed seeing Wareham Morris play with words, presentation and spacing in this collection. What’s also great is when there’s a clear backbone to a collection, which was obvious from the title, ‘Making Tracks’, which was a reoccurring theme throughout. "

Nikki Dudley, full review here

"Making Tracks by Katy Wareham Morris is a creative and conceptual triumph, exploring the disparate effects of a changing place on a multifaceted set of identities, communities, and cultures. Like her poem I try to explain it again,we are in the rhizomes of place-identity and its upheaval. Language and formal experimentation strike a beautifully shaped punch throughout these pages; playfully rendering the slippery nature of memory, class, gender with poetic tricks that are genuinely avant-garde, but never at the expense of earthy guts; which these poems are drenched in. Making Tracks gets to the hypocentre of West Midlands Industrial life."

R. M. Francis

A sample poem, more information and ordering for Making Tracks can be found here.

I, Ursula

"The poems which I find the most powerful are those where the poet explores the experience of the female muse and the male artist in both art and literature. [...] These poems – like so many others in the collection – explore relationships between artist and muse, men and women, the tensions between life and art, and the creation and appreciation of various forms of art, in terms of power and powerlessness."

Jane Simmons, Everybody's Reviewing, full review here.

A sample poem, more information and ordering for I, Ursula can be found here.

NATIONAL POETRY DAY 

This year's National Poetry Day is on Thursday, 1 October with a theme of VISION. V. Press is celebrating the day with a special poetry pamphlet bundle (for U.K. delivery only) that runs from now until the end of Sunday, 4 October 2020.

The NPD2020 bundle is 2 of This Lexia & Other Languages, Winter with Eva, Hierarchy of Needs, About Leaving, Patience , Making Tracks or Ynygornda for £12 including U.K. delivery only.

Please use the Paypal button below to order, remembering to include which 2 titles you'd prefer. (If it's left blank, then V. Press will select 2 for you.)

NB This offer is intended for U.K. only, though a P&P option for the rest of the world is included. Please make sure not to select the wrong option. Thank you.

NPD2020 delivery options

NPD2020 for U.K. delivery only £12.00 GBP NPD2020 for Rest of the World £24.00 GBP

2 pamphlets you'd prefer?

Launching Making Tracks

V. Press is very very pleased to announce the publication of Making Tracks, a poetry pamphlet by Katy Wareham Morris.

“From the very first page of this pamphlet, the reader encounters a voice which is entirely new. Within this pamphlet we find interrogations of masculinity, class, manual labour, what is and isn’t inherited through different generations and, most excitingly, see how these different preoccupations can be refracted and reflected through language and the line.

"As there should be when searching for new ways to contemplate tradition, a fresh type of experimentation with language, its spacial arrangement and its breath, is given to the reader, but always with a solid and concrete centre of people and place. A balance is struck between the heart, and the search for a language, scientific or natural, which might be able to fully represent it. Poems such as ‘You and Him: A Venn Diagram’ give us a visual language for exploring the pamphlet’s themes, and the pamphlet as a whole brings together the insertion of the urban and natural, the historical and the contemporary. An exciting new pamphlet from a poet doing important new things with the art.”
Andrew McMillan

“Making Tracks uses the texture of language and collaged fragments to celebrate those people who worked at the now defunct Longbridge car factory.  Wareham Morris’s father is the beating heart at the centre of these poems, it’s whose voice we hear, entrusted to her tender keeping.  There is the melancholy of a way of life gone here, but also the love of a day’s work and the satisfaction of a job well done.”
Helen Ivory

By design, Making Tracks is very dutiful, yet very fallible.

ISBN: 978-1-8380488-0-8
36 pages
R.R.P. £6.50

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below.

BUY MAKING TRACKS NOW using the paypal options below.

Making Tracks (including P&P/delivery options)

Making Tracks (including P&P for the U.K. only) £7.50 GBP Making Tracks (including P&P for Rest of World) £13.50 GBP

Metamorphosis

You were ruled by the track that sliced through the factory,
that carved the operating chaos of your life,
me too, by the blood in my arms –
the cartographic lines drawn in the grass laid before me

to keep it moving, to keep them and us alive.
Hundreds of transposable parts simultaneously
dropping into place like dancers, with your eyes
shut counting beats, the rhythm in your fast feet
recognised the tools, the bodies, the faces
jacked up the day new West Works opened,
when shells swam with robots then sailed
over the Bristol Road. Each day before and after
mechanised, standardised, but you the one-off,
driving from one heart, one hearth to another.
Daily, nightly dangers posed by predictable
assembly sequence, lines forced to refine,
whilst you designed me first, yet my parts
still coming together, directions in motion,
crafting the chaos of the steadfast home that would work us,
and the men who remained unchanged for years,
the production line that had produced you before.

It never stopped – your brain like my brain
loudly crashing to the beat of your fast feet
dancing on my heart, growing from the middle,
multiplicities dropping into additional software
for brand new computers, your quick hands
finished processes same place, same time, every time.
The machine making machines work.
That conveyor bridge demolished first.

A video reading of 'Grass' from the pamphlet can also be enjoyed below.

LAUNCH EVENT

Katy Wareham Morris will launch ‘Making Tracks’ online on Monday, 14 September 2020 from 7.30pm. This event will take place on the platform Blackboard Collaborate. If you’d like to attend, you can email Katy directly for the access link. Her email is: k.wareham.morris@worc.ac.uk.