2025 marks ten years of V. Press publishing solo-authored titles and, as part of our celebrations, we're sharing our year-by-year publications over that period.
The press was originally launched at Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2013 with a one-off poetry chapbook anthology before moving on to solo-authored poetry pamphlets in 2015.
Our first solo-authored poetry collection and our first flash fiction pamphlet came out in 2016. There have been illustrated poetry pamphlets, a dual-authored poetry pamphlet and a full-length flash fiction title along the way.
Today, we highlight our 2020 titles and celebrate extra delights from that year!
The Neverlands by Damhnait Monaghan winner of Saboteur Awards 2020 Best Novella!
An Inheritance by Diane Simmons shortlisted!
I, Ursula -- Ruth Stacey -- 31 January 2020
I, Ursula is a full-length collection of very haunting and very enigmatic poems by Ruth Stacey.
“Ruth Stacey's new collection revels in the frank and often stark geographies of mental health and the playful and often political complexities of the muse. By creating a sweeping panorama of the blindingly-bright – and occasionally dangerous – contexts in which the muse inspires, cajoles, and deceives, I, Ursula animates the raw truths of emotional fragility and various forms of haunting through a staggering range of voices and ghostly imaginings. This inventive tour of connection and disconnection, observing and being observed, leaves the reader contemplating power dynamics in both relationships and the creation (and consumption) of art in chilling new ways.” Carolyn Jess-Cooke
“Stricken and painfully well-observed, Ruth Stacey’s new collection is replete with our magical excuses, boundless infatuations, loyalties and sanctuaries. Her work is particularly poignant on the porousness between our inner and outer lives. To enter the poems is to feel another consciousness pressing against your own through a boundary that seems, for a moment, not to exist.” Luke Kennard
Winter with Eva -- Elaine Baker -- 14 February 2020
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
Winter with Eva is very human, very conscious.
A sample poem from this poetry pamphlet/sequence can be found below. More information and ordering for Winter with Eva can be found here.
Crowns
We’re all set up –
two beers. Mixed nuts.
Half a plastic tub of Roses on the rug.
It’s a Wonderful Life
playing out on the telly.
You’ve been baking
and before you’re back with the plate
I can already taste the cozonac –
sweet and melting.
We pull the crackers,
put on the paper crowns
hold hands,
settle down to watch George Bailey drown
in his small American town.
Every year’s the same.
I pretend this isn’t crying.
It doesn’t get you
till the end,
when all George’s friends descend,
fill the room with smiles,
empty their pockets to an impromptu chorus of
‘Hark the Herald’.
Now your tears are coming,
there’s no stopping them.
You say you miss the singing.
Where are all the children?
An Inheritance -- Dianne Simmons -- 28 February 2020
“An Inheritance is a gem of a novella. It succeeds in spanning seventy years and four generations of one family, exquisitely capturing their relationships, secrets and divided loyalties. The historical changes wrought by each decade are delicately interwoven throughout the twists and turns within the family’s life. This captivating narrative will make you weep and smile.”
Joanna Campbell
“Despite large secrets and larger financial woes, one family’s superior love, kindness and understanding pulls them through the hardest of times, from generation to generation. An Inheritance is a poignant heart-warmer of a novella-in-flash and is a useful lesson in the importance of kindness in this life.”
Nuala O’Connor
An Inheritance is very readable and very intriguing.
A sample flash fiction from this novella-in-flash can be found below. More information and ordering for An Inheritance can be found here.
Profit and Loss
1932
Thomas takes the cameo brooch.
“The mount is gold,” the customer says. “It was a present from my husband on our wedding day.”
Thomas reads the inscription on the back: 14th May 1930. Not even two years ago. “It must be difficult for you to part with this Mrs Baldwin – even temporarily.”
“My John wouldn’t be happy about it, but…”
He nods and searches in the drawer for his eye glass, relieved that he has an excuse to look away. When Mrs Baldwin had first started coming into the shop, she’d been pretty. Now she’s emaciated, her eyes shrunken and her face pale. He sees so many customers with tuberculosis. At least she has something worth pawning – many don’t. Recently, he was tricked into giving a good price for a bundle of clothes, only to find that someone had hidden a cabbage inside to make the parcel heavier. The smell in the storeroom was ghastly. His father would never fall for such a trick, but Thomas, guessing at the customer’s desperation, was almost glad to be deceived.
Thomas picks up the eyeglass, does a quick calculation, offers a loan of five guineas.
Six months after Mrs Baldwin’s death, Thomas removes the brooch from the safe. He has taken care to follow the business’s guidelines to the letter. His father won’t tolerate special treatment or any display of compassion, even for a grieving husband burdened by doctor’s bills and funeral costs. The brooch must go up for sale today and a profit recorded.
He cleans the brooch, attaches a two-guinea price tag to it and places it on a velvet tray in a prominent place in the shop window. By lunchtime, two people have inspected it, but it doesn’t sell. By two pm, despite brisk trade and a lady promising to return within the hour, it still hasn’t sold. By four, concerned that his father will arrive soon to shut up the shop, Thomas moves the brooch out of the window, wraps it in tissue paper and puts it into his breast pocket.
With one eye on the door, he takes five guineas out of his wallet and places the money into the till. It’s more than he can comfortably spare, but he’ll find a use for the brooch one day. Neatly, he records the transaction in the ledger – sale price in one column, profit in the next – just as his father likes it.
Ynygordna -- Kelly Williams -- 27 April 2020
Jonathan Kinsman
“Bristling with vivid imagery, vibrant language and powerful emotions, these poems are not afraid to challenge conventional boundaries in poetry as in life. Ynygordna is a fresh and striking selection of poems, encompassing a bold and brave exploration of gender, sexuality and love within and against societal expectations.”
Sarah Leavesley, V. Press Prize for Poetry Judge
Ynygordna is very ardent and very versatile.
Winner of the V. Press Prize for Poetry 2019
A sample poem from this pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Ynygordna can be found here.
futch
Scream what needs to be said: the labels
found on ver body are engrained in our minds,
not ver skin.
Take pride in fingers that move two at once
and sex that sings in newborn cells
in the amygdala of closet mannequins.
There is urgency in a body that does not
align with walls it sleeps within,
animated suddenly in a light not blurred
by straight-lined articles.
Ve meets me in a place
where thumbprints are moulded in mercury;
the blood of clouds runs with ver, neither
disappearing into sky nor wandering
upon pavements.
Ve is between the lines of my favourite poem,
the blank page in the introduction fated
to be folded and scribbled.
Splintering euphoria
in strips of jock-strap clips:
trimmed fingernails trace letters of wildfire
in scripts made louder than the sirens
of a bordering wall.
A Bluebottle in Late October -- John Wheway -- 18 May 2020
“This is a funny, sad, yet uplifting account of how we live and love. Poems by a formidable poet, pulling no punches, yet with a delightful lightness of touch.
Domestic bliss is here, with moments of tenderness and beauty, hopelessness too, and a deep urge to engage. How can we live together? Why do we need to? What compels us?
These poems made me laugh out loud, though their acuity is sobering. We’ll all glimpse ourselves in them. Marked by meticulous diction and vibrant imagery, this is poetry with an authentic voice.” Neil Rollinson
A Bluebottle in Late October is very particular and very human.
A sample poem from this full-length collection can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for A Bluebottle in Late October can be found here.
Making Up
At the mirror, she takes a step back,
like an artist changing places
for a different angle, absorbed
not in herself
but in the portrait’s subject, dabbing
pigment over each cheek, circling
with the tip of her pinkie to reveal
unseen depths.
He’d never seen his mother in her,
but now he’s like the boy who watched
the woman in the strapless dress, lips kissed
with Rouge Noir, hurrying
downstairs to the street, bowing
into a waiting taxi. He’d peer
between the curtains, noticing
the eagerness in her pace,
not knowing what it meant,
though he knew she loved to dance,
and that the Polish captain
who gave him that red fire engine
was not his father’s friend.
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome -- Meg Pokrass -- 22 June 2020
Tania Hershman
“‘…there is always a story inside a story inside a dog…’ With dreamlike clarity, these beautifully choreographed stories slip, delve and spiral in and out of the quotidian and the surreal with such deftness and precision that like Alice in her wonderland, suddenly you find yourself catching your breath in the light and dark of a world both familiar and yet deliciously unsettling. Pokrass has once again produced an exquisite collection for our enjoyment.”
Mary Jane Holmes
Alice In Wonderland Syndrome is very tender yet very naughty.
A sample flash from this pamphlet can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Alice In Wonderland Syndrome can be found here.
Alice In Wonderland Syndrome is also available internationally (outside of the U.K.) as an eBook on Kindle through Amazon here.
Mr. Figs
Mr. Figs has jelly on his hands in her dreams. He swells up with real pep when he strums his guitar. He has love for pale beer, and his favorite brand of humor is the same as hers. He likes Oolong tea. Can peel the toughest skin from her heart.
Mr. Figs protects his name, doesn't giggle, and doesn't chafe where she does, watches while she looks away and her face reddens like wine.
Mr. Figs tells her about his dog, how the dog is more than enough pets, because he sleeps little and irregularly. She’s not happy about her practical footwear, but Mr. Figs does not mind her thick-assed socks, in fact he can’t see them and has never asked to see her feet.
Also, he has recently been to the doctor who cleared him of fatal ills.
Mr. Figs has a trick and the trick is becoming Mr. Figs. A phantom here on this earth. Like her, he doesn’t read the newspaper—or if he does, says absolutely nothing about the real horrible things that happen.
This Lexia & Other Languages -- Helen Kay -- 17 July 2020
“In these poems about the relationship between a mother and son, about dyslexia and language itself (‘the dangling hooks of “f”s and “t”s’), Helen Kay forges an idiom which is both tender and firm. Kay draws us into the experience of living in a society shaped around neurotypical expectations. The poems that result are angry and searching. But in feeling out the boundaries of language, they achieve a ‘seedling syntax’ which is alive and beautiful.” Will Harris
“These poems are quicksilver – deft, concise, witty and full of fresh ways of saying things. With empathy, and sometimes anger, they skilfully lead the reader into a world of words that confounds expectation but contains its own very specific delights.” Judy Brown
“We are told ‘all shapes are made to fit’, but sometimes the world has a preordained notion of ‘shape’ that does not include people with dyslexia. In Helen Kay’s latest publication, she reflects on a ‘mother-son bond’, as they navigate a childhood where dyslexic can mean being ‘labelled “slow’’’. This Lexia & Other Languages will awaken you to their world, to ‘hear it, taste it, feel it’ in all its devastating complexity.” Elisabeth Sennitt Clough
This Lexia & Other Languages is very genuine and very human.
A sample poem from this pamphlet can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for This Lexia & Other Languages can be found here.
Short Term Memory Loss
It starts with an empty tight-lipped jug
or a foggy eviction from my narrative.
Familiar names are clinging to my tongue
I lose my spectacles and wash my purse.
A slush of turnips blackens in a pan.
Others fear dementia. I was born misplacing
mid-stairs, purpose waves goodbye. I float.
Quiz time. I parrot an answer, claim its mine.
At night I lie awake to rescue hunches
that it started with a ‘P’ or was it ‘K’?
Next day fills with Mrs Malaprop
whotsit pen drives brillig crib sheets.
Only the key things cross the neural pathway:
the days that leaked the saltiness of now
the dregs of pain the scent of being loved.
Hierarchy of Needs -- Charley Barnes & Claire Walker -- 3 August 2020
Hierarchy of Needs A Retelling is a collaborative pamphlet of poems by Charley Barnes and Claire Walker.“This pamphlet is a reminder of the extraordinary paradoxes and dualities cultivated between the shaky coexistence of the natural world within the Anthropocene. We are drawn into other-worldly ecologies populated by ‘giddy’ ‘warriors’ ‘fenced in (for freedom)’ and ‘giants, balancing on toes’; yet also confronted with the harsh and tangible realities that confirm the mortal fragility of our environments, even those we create for ourselves through technology. There is adept writing skill evident in these poems: fresh anthropomorphic voices propagate amongst lyrical lines that converge with direct, demanding declaratives; violent vivid images give way to mellow half-rhymes and assonance; form is executed with precision and also reworked into affecting challenge and experiment. Here lies the adroitness of a pamphlet that moves like rhizomes – with purpose, poise and intelligence.
“Re-working nature’s contradictions and vulnerabilities, and ultimately its needs and desires with this resolute energy, offers a striking parallel: as women writers we might be seen, but not always heard. For me then, this pamphlet is more than just an excellent example of eco-poetry; it is a sophisticated and spirited example of eco-feminism. This is a Mother Earth who nurtures, protects, provides but is also ‘bounty hunter’ with unmistakable, fierce needs of her own: unapologetically pursued and satisfied. ‘Something beautiful’.”
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. The book is split into two sections, each headed with its own recreations of the original five-layered hierarchical pyramid. They feel like a catechism – questions that we must keep on asking ourselves.
“The poems are each beautiful and spared from unnecessary clutter – there is such gentleness and consideration to be gained from the reading. Nature is personified and within the poems there is an aching, a longing to be freed from our human bonds – to be able to answer the age-old call of the seasons without our interference.
“Some of the poems writhe with wonderful touches of the fairy tale. Some express nature’s desire to work in harmony with us as it did in days long past. Some stand in stark contrast to our modern, technology reliant world. Some convey a sense of eternal searching, of pain and grief. Some are piquant with our own bodies, loves, families and deaths. Under the current circumstances and the strange times we are living through, this really does feel like a needed book. We could all do with being a bit more tree.”
Jane Burn
Hierarchy of Needs is very structured, very inquisitive.
A sample poem from the pamphlet can be enjoyed below. More information and ordering for Hierarchy of Needs A Retelling can be found here.
For Agatha, who loved this place
I wake slow, see no need to rush,
in this, my centenary year.
I’ve earned this slowness,
have honed the art
of observation since I took root:
planted For Agatha, who loved this place.
My own potential realised,
I know all seasons of people,
have taken their stories down
and filled their lungs in return.
Mothers push their babies around
and I shade their tired eyes,
wish them unbroken sleep tonight.
Children come and go – grow –
race around my sturdy trunk,
build dens inside the hollow of my heart.
They weave up my branches, so light
I shoulder them so they might stretch
towards the sun.
I have seen whole family trees expand.
Generations of the same tribe
picnic together at my feet.
At times, this warms me
more than a summer day:
generations gabbling, together, alive.
Here, I witness life,
snap a twig of hair and carve a quill,
scribe everything into my parchment
to pass on. Collecting roots, truths to tell,
for Agatha, who loved this place.
Making Tracks -- Katy Wareham Morris -- 10 September 2020
"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.
A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Making Tracks can be found here.
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.
Blue Dot Aubade -- Miranda Lynn Barnes -- 10 October 2020
“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. I'm obsessed with light, as are these poems. Ultimately, the language is the lesson – it's how the poems see and they may affect your vision afterwards.
Light travels as waves
and arrives as particles.
We travel as bodies
and arrive as light.
(From 'Cheating Light')”
Simon Barraclough
“Miranda Lynn Barnes' Blue Dot Aubade uses astrophysics and human experience as lenses for one another and thereby creates a renewed appreciation of both. 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
Blue Dot Aubade is very cosmic, and very numinous.
A sample poem from the pamphlet can be found below. More information and ordering for Blue Dot Aubade can be found here.
Olivine
She’s been found
on meteorites, the dust
on Mars, tails of comets,
and the natal discs
of forming stars. Her crystal
green has been seen
in early solar birth
and the magma ocean
of the moon as it cooled.
She sparkles in every arc,
every glint against the ink
of the sky.
You are the greenest twinkle
in my eye, Olivine.
