A big post today including Substack and editor news, and a round-up of this year's V. Press Prize for Poetry, reviews, new releases, events and coming soon...
V. Press Editor Sarah James/Leavesley has a new collection, Darling Blue, out with Indigo Dreams Publishing later this month. More info is below and you can also find details and a link in the V. Press bookshop. Historically, Sarah hasn't shared much about her own work through V. Press, but with the increasing time, energy and financial demands of running a small press in the current climate, it's becoming hard to do both without sometimes combining the two.. .
DARLING BLUE
Joint Winner Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024
Darling Blue interweaves ekphrastic poems with a book-length fictional poetry narrative of love, lust and letting go. The poems inspired by Pre-Raphaelite artworks include QR codes, which readers can scan to view the pieces after or alongside their reading. Blue here is more than a colour or inspiration; it is desire, secrecy and sorrow – the essence of ‘feeling / really alive’, yet ‘distance’s illusion’.
“A fascinating creative hybrid weaving ekphrasis and cohesive narrative, Darling Blue deftly balances its fictional speaker’s personal response to various Pre-Raphaelite artworks, with rich descriptive hints that resonate way beyond the mere visual. Exploring the complex tensions between the public sphere and private activities, this collection is a gallery tour of the narrator’s unfulfilling relationship with an unattainable partner, through to the ultimate redemption of self-worth and new love. James’s finely crafted and intelligently controlled poems brim with vivid imagery and lush sensory detail, reminding the reader ‘how brightly sunlight shines through // when freed from a cracked mirror’.” Sarah Doyle, Pre-Raphaelite Society Poet-in-Residence
“James uses the lyric and ekphrasis to create a
profound and moving collection on the cost of love; what endures and how we
survive its wake. As vivid and emotive as its pre-Raphaelite sources, Darling
Blue is also startlingly direct, eloquent and consoling on the things we
find hardest to put into words. An unmissable collection.” Luke Kennard
ISBN: 978-1-912876-97-6
58 pages
R.R.P. £9.50
The collection is available to pre-order from Indigo Dreams here, with more information available on Sarah's personal website here or through her new Substack.
New Substack
Sarah has recently set up a Substack, reedlike: whispering through wind & water. This is very much in its early stages and is likely to develop and change as she sees what is and isn't possible and what readers want from it.
At the moment, this is very much a space she's using as a writer herself with content aimed primarily at other readers/writers, along with some pieces that may be of interest to walkers, nature-lovers, photographers and artists.
This already includes experience-led writer-life posts and prompts but will hopefully develop to also encompass how-to pieces, reader discussion and poem analysis pieces and more academic style articles.
This is a work-in-progress and not one that she can also do separately for V. Press, as it's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain multiple personal and V. Press accounts on different platforms. (Sarah and V. Press's current social media accounts on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X, amongst others will remain separate, for the time being at least.)
With Substack, if this 'trial' proves productive, goes well and subscriber numbers grow, she may then extend this profile to share more about V. Press's work and publications too.
If you're already on Substack, Sarah's handle there is @moresarah and you can view the page here.
You can also subscribe to it by filling in the form below.
2025-26 V. Press Prize for Poetry
V. Press is very very delighted to share that the winner of this year's V. Press Prize for Poetry is Eleni Brooks!
This year's V. Press Prize for Poetry shortlist of three manuscripts picked by the University of Worcester was wide-ranging in terms of contents, form, language awareness and experimentation.
V. Press editor Sarah Leavesley enjoyed the poems, which effectively encompassed themes of coming of age, modern life, love, trauma, self-discovery, politics and more. The three shortlisted selections also successfully maintained a distinctive style and approach across the experiences, shapes on the page and/or uses of form contained within each manuscript.
In the end, she chose ‘grown girl’ as the winner of this year’s prize for its confident voice, striking lines, unusual images and light touch, all working together to create an interesting and insightful read.
Sarah is already working with Eleni on the chapbook and looking forward to publishing grown girl in 2026.
OUT NOW

and salted drops of sorrow slip across skin.
The others hold back with pensive frown –
the night is dark; the air is thin.
Salted drops of sorrow slipping over skin,
Joseph lifts lifeless hand to lips.
The night is dark; the air is thin.
Not just a kiss but a pleading,
Joseph lifts lifeless hand. We’re lipped
in the presence of beings in portal.
Not just a kiss but a pleading
in John’s placing of hollowed feet.
We’re present here, amongst portals,
that bridge terra with firmament.
John lowers those hallowed feet,
covers them in linen –
another bridge between earth and air,
another sail, another astrolabe
covers us in the linen
of slave, bride and king.
Another sail, another astrolabe
returned to soil. We rerun too.
And learn to step as slave, bride, king.
That pieta marks each seer.
Return to soil, and rerun too.
I sit still, even as palmer,
as pieta’s mark widens eyes
with salted drops of sorrow.
REVIEW NEWS
The Price of Happiness
sum of her PARTS
"In Dreaming Backward, Reed both alleviates and anguishes his readers with casually devastating bouts of nostalgia, cemented by the use of almost melancholic monochrome photographs of Reed in his youth. He longs for the tender, mellow Newcastle he once knew, and resents ageing, yearning for dodgems and “faraway places” that now seem out of reach. Reed expertly replicates the feeling of child-like wonder through harmless astonishment and innocent memories which seamlessly blend into unfamiliarity."
36 pages
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