New Releases, Spring/Easter Special Offers & Submissions Update

V. Press is delighted to head into Spring with two new poetry titles interwoven with nature and three special Spring/Easter pamphlet bundles.

NEW RELEASES

Jenna Plewes' fifth full collection, A Woven Rope, was published on 18 March 2021. 

“Jenna Plewes has a remarkable gift for infusing every subject with an imagery and a sensuality which are detailed and exact, so that you are convinced of the truthfulness of the emotions expressed. Every poem here contributes to the whole, but for me the outstanding section is the third: nowhere else have I seen the carer’s role exemplified with such clarity. She seems to have unlimited empathy for the subjects of the sequence, and she never tips over into sentimentality. This book, Jenna Plewes’s fifth, is her strongest yet.” John Killick

“Grace and purpose distinguish this collection where poems trace the arc of parenting and explore the manifold challenges of being in the world.  This collection also observes the natural world, its beauties, and its terrors, and is unafraid to confront violence and cruelty.  The writing throughout is unforced, fine-drawn, lyrical, heart-felt.” Penelope Shuttle

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

Sarah Doyle's poetry chapbook, Something so wild and new in this feeling Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals Reimagined, was released on 2 March 2021.

“In these inventive and adventurous collage poems, Sarah Doyle presents Dorothy Wordsworth’s exuberant feeling for life and language in a fresh fabric of her own making. Sympathetic and insightful, tactful, and imaginative, Doyle’s compositions refract the energies of Dorothy’s writings through the subtle medium of her own sensibility, and the result is at once daring and illuminating.” Gregory Leadbetter

 

“In Something so wild and new in this feeling, Sarah Doyle has taken Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals and developed excerpts into poems, finding felicities of phrasing, musicality, and ideas. Doyle’s skills in pacing, use of the line, and the possibilities of form help us appreciate anew Wordsworth’s habits of thought and close attention to the natural world. With Wordsworth and Doyle, the reader hears the birds singing in the mist.” Carrie Etter

A sample poem, more information and ordering for Something so wild and new in this feeling Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals Reimagined can be found here.

SPRING/EASTER BUNDLES *

V. Press is delighted to have three double-pamphlet bundle offers available from now until the end of April 2021.

In and out of this world bundle: Blue Dot Aubade and Hierarchy of Needs for £11.99 including postage and packing for U.K. delivery

Blue Dot Aubade

"I don’t think poems need to teach anything but nevertheless there's much to learn about the cosmos, the spirit, matter, and what matters here. The best part is that the lessons are delivered by a high-energy beam of surprising, hyper-attentive language.[..]" Simon Barraclough

"[...] At times playful, at times poignant, these intelligent poems illuminate our environment in the broadest sense: they give us a new view of our universe and our relationship to it. An engaging, original debut." V. Press Guest Editor Carrie Etter

More on Blue Dot Aubade and a sample poem can be found here.

Hierarchy of Needs

"This pamphlet is a reminder of the extraordinary paradoxes and dualities cultivated between the shaky coexistence of the natural world within the Anthropocene. [...]" Katy Wareham Morris

"We do not exist without nature, though more and more these days, we seem to be expected to. In this book, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is used as a narrative to consider the entwining of both nature’s and our own human needs. [...]" Jane Burn

More on Hierarchy of Needs and a sample poem can be found here.

Blue Dot Aubade & Hierarchy of Needs bundle (with delivery options)

Blue Dot Aubade & Hierarchy of Needs for U.K. delivery only £11.99 GBP Blue Dot Aubade & Hierarchy of Needs for Rest of the World £30.00 GBP

Community bundle: Winter with Eva and Checkout for £11.99 including postage and packing for U.K. delivery

Winter with Eva

"This is a poignant but tough love story told against the backdrop of Brexit-era England. Eva is Romanian, a free spirit with a beautiful soul navigating the ignorance and hatred of her adopted country. [...] So what begins as a love story evolves to encompass a greater theme – these poems speak eloquently of the way we live now." Tamar Yoseloff

"Elaine Baker writes so beautifully about love: macrocosmic passion and domestic comfort are drawn with sharp, sensual tenderness. But Winter with Eva is also a timely sociopolitical exploration and a gripping page-turner of a pamphlet, one to read carefully yet compulsively in a single sitting." Rachel Piercey

More on Winter with Eva and a sample poem can be found here.

Checkout

"Checkout is a sequence of character portraits and vignettes based on the ephemeral characters that cross a corner shop’s bell-chiming threshold. [...] This is a bold and brave collection from the distinctive voice of Kathy Gee."  Rhian Edwards

"In a time where high street shops are declining or under threat, Checkout is a timely ode, set in Middle England with a ‘cadenced heart,/ alert to daily rhythms, oiled/ by traffic, chips and friends.’" Roy Mcfarlane

More on Checkout and a sample poem can be found here.

Winter with Eva & Checkout bundle (with delivery options)

Winter with Eva & Checkout for U.K. delivery only £11.99 GBP Winter with Eva & Checkout for Rest of the World £30.00 GBP

Survival bundle: art brut and Scare Stories for £11.99 including postage and packing for U.K. delivery  

art brut

"The poems in David O’Hanlon’s first collection are ‘epiphanies of sun’ which shine a light on the poet’s experiences of psychiatric illness; to read them is to experience serial insights into a much overlooked and frequently taboo aspect of the human condition. [...] David O’Hanlon shows us that while the past can have a powerful hold over us, beauty, truth and poetry can emerge from the depths of anguish and despair. An astonishing debut." Fergus McGonigal

"If David O'Hanlon had written this sentence, you'd have shed a tear by now." Jenni Pascoe, JibbaJabba

More on art brut and a sample poem can be found here.

Scare Stories

"The poems in Scare Stories offer us exactly that: a series of richly populated narratives that show the contemporary moment as a grotesque and fearful nightmare. This is a world of war and refugees, high politics and helicopters, sex and suffering as entertainment. Somewhere at the root of things is money. It’s all delivered in sharp quatrains whose flamboyant rhyming makes it more brutal, not less. [..]" Tony Williams

"David Clarke conjures up post-apocalyptic visions that are uncomfortably close to our present. All of humanity is played out here, from gamers to generals, the whole bitingly observed. Scare Stories is a frightening mirror, but it’s also compelling and hypnotic, I dare you to look away." Claire Trévien

More on Scare Stories and a sample poem can be found here.

art brut & Scare Stories bundle (with delivery options)

art brut & Scare Stories for U.K. delivery only £11.99 GBP art brut & Scare Stories for Rest of the World £30.00 GBP

* Offers intended for U.K. delivery only and valid until the end of 30 April 2021 only.

SUBMISSIONS

V. Press editor Sarah Leavesley has been bowled over by the quality and range of the flash fiction submissions received during the February/March 2021 submissions window.

A big thank you to everyone who shared the call-out and to all those who have responded.

She is currently enjoying reading your submissions, while anticipating some very very difficult decisions ahead!

NEW REVIEWS

"Dilating and contracting like a beating heart, Wareham Morris’s dizzying perspectives are in themselves a commentary on the developers’ promotional blurb about “putting the heart back into/Longbridge”."
Stella Backhouse, Here Comes Everyone, full review here

For more information, a sample poem and to order Making Tracks by Katy Wareham Morris, please click here.

Launching A Woven Rope

V. Press is very very delighted to announce the publication of A Woven Rope, a poetry collection by Jenna Plewes.

“Jenna Plewes has a remarkable gift for infusing every subject with an imagery and a sensuality which are detailed and exact, so that you are convinced of the truthfulness of the emotions expressed. Every poem here contributes to the whole, but for me the outstanding section is the third: nowhere else have I seen the carer’s role exemplified with such clarity. She seems to have unlimited empathy for the subjects of the sequence, and she never tips over into sentimentality. This book, Jenna Plewes’s fifth, is her strongest yet.” John Killick

“Grace and purpose distinguish this collection where poems trace the arc of parenting and explore the manifold challenges of being in the world.  This collection also observes the natural world, its beauties, and its terrors, and is unafraid to confront violence and cruelty.  The writing throughout is unforced, fine-drawn, lyrical, heart-felt.” Penelope Shuttle

A Woven Rope is very searching and very forgiving.

ISBN: 978-1-9161096-6-7
60 pages
R.R.P. £10.99

A sample poem can be enjoyed below.

BUY A Woven Rope NOW using the paypal options below.

A Woven Rope (including P&P)

A Woven Rope (including P&P for the U.K. only) £13.00 GBP A Woven Rope (including P&P for Rest of World) £20.00 GBP

Orphaned

The road is reeling him in

mile after mile after mile,

pulling him through dark waters.

Needlefish aim for his eyes,

shoal after shoal hit the glass;

he stares ahead, unblinking,

feels the line tighten, then slacken,

the hook deep in his gut holds. 

He lets the night stream past,

conjures her voice, smell of her skin, 

paper-thin feel of her fingers,  

replays their wordless conversation.    

Wipers click a mantra in his head;

the tug and tear of severing

is still to come.

Launching Something so wild and new in this feeling

 

V. Press is very very delighted to announce the publication of Something so wild and new in this feeling  by Sarah Doyle.

“In these inventive and adventurous collage poems, Sarah Doyle presents Dorothy Wordsworth’s exuberant feeling for life and language in a fresh fabric of her own making. Sympathetic and insightful, tactful, and imaginative, Doyle’s compositions refract the energies of Dorothy’s writings through the subtle medium of her own sensibility, and the result is at once daring and illuminating.”

Gregory Leadbetter

 

“In Something so wild and new in this feeling, Sarah Doyle has taken Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals and developed excerpts into poems, finding felicities of phrasing, musicality, and ideas. Doyle’s skills in pacing, use of the line, and the possibilities of form help us appreciate anew Wordsworth’s habits of thought and close attention to the natural world. With Wordsworth and Doyle, the reader hears the birds singing in the mist.”

Carrie Etter

 

Something so wild and new in this feeling is very composite and very metamorphic. 

ISBN: 978-1-8380488-1-5

36 pages

R.R.P. £6.50

A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below.

All the Heavens

Venus first showing herself between the struggling

clouds; afterwards Jupiter appeared. The crescent 

moon, Jupiter, and Venus. Jupiter was very glorious,

and one large star hung over the corner of the hills.

Many stars were out. The clouds were moveless,

and the sky soft purple, the lake of Rydale calm,

Jupiter behind. Jupiter at least we call him –

we always call the largest star Jupiter.

The moon was a good height above the mountains.

She seemed far distant in the sky. There were two

stars beside her, that twinkled in and out, and seemed

almost like butterflies in motion and lightness.

Three solitary stars in the middle of the blue vault,

one or two on the points of the high hills. I had 

time to look at the moon while I was thinking my

own thoughts. The moon travelled through the clouds.

The evening star and the glory of the sky: the reflections

in the water were more beautiful than the sky itself,

brighter than precious stones, for ever melting away.

The evening star sunk down, colours faded away.

Jupiter over the hilltops, the only star, like a sun,

flashed out at intervals from behind a black cloud.

The moon appearing now half veiled, the stars

sometimes hiding themselves behind greying clouds.

A very bright moonlight night. Venus almost like 

another moon, lost to us long before she goes 

down the large white sea. The horned moon was set.

A beautiful evening, very starry, the horned moon.

The moon shone like herrings in the water, a silver

boat. The moon had the old moon in her arms

in a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed

by multitudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp.

A very mild moonlight night. Glow-worms everywhere.

Attended by Jupiter and Venus in their palest hues,

the crescent moon, a silvery line, a thready bow.

The moonlight lay upon the hills like snow.