Longbarrow Press

Alistair Noon and Matthew Clegg will be giving a joint reading at The Red Deer, Sheffield, on Saturday 19 May (7.30pm prompt start; admission free). Berlin-based translator and poet Noon will present a selection of poems from his recent Longbarrow Press pamphlets Across the Water and Swamp Area (and Earth Records, his first full-length collection from Nine Arches). Clegg will be reading new and unpublished work from his sequences The Navigators and Chinese Lanterns. The two poets have devised an evening of journeys; from the urban waterways of South Yorkshire to the rivers, lakes and seas of Central Europe (and further afield), accompanied by Li Po, Coleridge, Mao and others. You can listen to Alistair Noon read extracts from Swamp Area here; a recording of Matthew Clegg reading ‘Li Po’s Letter to Rumi’ (from Chinese Lanterns) can be found here.

We’ve uploaded the first in an occasional series of short films to our new Vimeo page: click here to see Andrew Hirst reading poems from The Frome Primer (on location in Grimsby) and to view the film accompanying Matthew Clegg’s Lost Between Stations (you can also watch Lost Between Stations via the embedded link below).

Recent posts on the Longbarrow Blog include Chris Jones’ reading of ‘Howl’ (the movie) and Mark Goodwin’s Ordnance Survey lament. Our Soundcloud site features new recordings from Kelvin Corcoran (a preview of his new ‘Sea Table’ sequence) and Andrew Hirst (an excerpt from his 2008 collection ‘Songs to Make & Mend’). Elsewhere on the web, Chris Jones has redesigned and relaunched his website (with several new features) and Rob Hindle concludes his blog‘s excellent mini-series of guest poets from Northern Ireland with a poem by Damian Smyth (the other poets in the series are Moyra Donaldson and Martin Mooney). You can also read work-in-progress from his collaboration with the artist Mark Dunn here.

The faithful come to confess their failings:

bells echo across the water:
wrenches striking a freighter.

(from ‘Across the Water’, Alistair Noon).

Longbarrow Press is proud to annnounce the publication of a new pamphlet and CD by Peter Riley. XIV PIECES  comprises fourteen new pieces – neither poems nor prose – in a landscape-format pamphlet, accompanied by a 16-minute CD of Riley reading the pieces at home in Cambridge. This first edition of XIV PIECES is limited to 80 signed and numbered copies.

You can read ‘Wetton Mill New Year’s Eve 1974-75′ from XIV PIECES here and listen to Riley reading ‘Middleton by Wirksworth 1980′ here. To order the pamphlet and CD at the special price of £8.50, please click here. This price is inclusive of UK postage and packing (EU and RoW postage options are also available on the same webpage).

The valley at night, when the patches of white rock on the sides start floating in the frosty haze. Like floating verses. Like verses of songs which move from one story to another, and follow you around.

(from ‘Wetton Mill New Year’s Eve 1974-75′ in XIV PIECES).

Details of Peter Riley’s other publications can be found on his website.

Again, it is spring. At last I have 
found a little happiness. The Northern
climate offers up its reward to me 
- an anti-coagulant, heaven knows,
Yi Sha, what its white flowers will do.

Longbarrow Press marks the new season with a round-up of recent and forthcoming publications, events and recordings.

The new Longbarrow Blog launched in February, featuring poems, articles, reviews and other writings by editor and publisher Brian Lewis, Longbarrow Press poets, and other Longbarrow Press contributors and collaborators. Current posts include a review of John Ashbery’s translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations by Matthew Clegg, and Alistair Noon‘s memoir of the East German border police. 

This year’s States of Independence one-day press fair takes place at De Montfort University in Leicester on Saturday 17 March (10.30am-4.30pm, admission free), with more than 70 writers presenting readings and workshops throughout the day. Longbarrow poets Mark Goodwin and Chris Jones will be reading selections from the forthcoming anthology The Footing at 11am; you are also welcome to visit the Longbarrow Press stall (with a full range of pamphlets and CDs). Click here to view the full programme of readings, workshops, displays and talks.

April’s new titles include Andrew Hirst’s Hello Dolly (three long poems bound as individual A6 pamphlets and pouched in an envelope) and Peter Riley’s XIV PIECES (fourteen pieces set as a 20pp pamphlet in landscape format). Further details will be posted here in the coming weeks. Our recent pamphlets include Matthew Clegg’s Lost Between Stations, Kelvin Corcoran’s Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee’s Face and Alistair Noon’s Across the Water and Swamp Area: all are  available to purchase through this site (via PayPal). Order during March and we’ll send you a  free, unique Longbarrow CD sampler.

The title of this post is borrowed from Andrew Hirst’s ongoing photo-series, Sketches for Spring (as is the accompanying photograph). Click here to view the sequence (filed under ‘The Seasons’) and other recent works (including the excellent Test Patterns series).

Elsewhere on the web, poet Rob Hindle and visual artist Paul Evans are posting interesting work on their respective sites. Rob Hindle’s blog has a number of thoughtful pieces on poetic practice (with a lively ‘Comments’ thread) and regular ‘Guest Poets’, while Paul Evans has been documenting and reflecting on the issues raised by his ’Away from the Pod’ installation on Origin011 (‘Away from the Pod’ is part of Under the Sea, an ocean-themed exhibition running at Sheffield’s Millennium Galleries until 10 June 2012). ’Tissues and Organs’, a new collaboration between Evans, Karl (Andrew) Hirst and Chris Jones, is previewed here. A conversation with Evans about the first and second phases of the Seven Wonders project was recently uploaded to SoundCloud; listen to it here. 

Finally… the Longbarrow Press recording programme continues, with recent uploads to our SoundCloud site including Matthew Clegg’s ‘Early Blossom’ (with cellist Liz Hanks and guitarist Adam White), more from Kelvin Corcoran’s ‘Words Through a Hole…’, Mark Goodwin’s ‘Torridon Peopled‘ (recorded on location on Bodmin Moor), James Caruth’s ‘High Riggs’ (recorded in Bowcroft Cemetery, Stannington) and a further excerpt from Rob Hindle and Ray Hearne’s acclaimed performance of Hindle’s ‘The Purging of Spence Broughton’.

Yi Sha visits me in the mornings 
- I say to him yes, yes, I understand. 
But I don’t, all I see are arabesques, 
a stranger in the form of a small bird
deliquescing in the sharp, sudden rain.

From Songs to Make & Mend (2008), Andrew Hirst

Longbarrow Press moves into 2012 with the publication of two new pamphlets by Alistair Noon. Across the Water was originally published as joint winner of the Mimesis Digital Chapbook Initiative in 2008; an earlier version of Swamp Area appeared online through Intercapillary Editions in 2009. Both works have been revised and expanded for print publication. You can read ‘The Molecule Man’ from Swamp Area here and listen to Noon reading ‘Filling the Triangle’, ‘Hill with Bunker and Flak Tower’ and an excerpt from ‘Motility Patterns’ (all from Swamp Area) here. Across the Water and Swamp Area can be purchased separately or together at a discounted price; to order the pamphlets, please click here.

With the sun caught not in the trees
but in the high-voltage cables,
the brightening morning made
a new ideogram of the East.

(from ‘Motility Patterns’ in Swamp Area)

Longbarrow Press is proud to announce the publication of Kelvin Corcoran’s Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee’s Face. Corcoran’s new work has met with great enthusiasm from audiences in Berlin (at last month’s Poetry Hearings festival), Hay and London. You can read the first poem from the pamphlet’s second section here and listen to Corcoran reading the second poem from the second section here. Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee’s Face is available in pamphlet and CD formats(these can be purchased separately or together at a discounted price); to order the pamphlet and CD, please click here.

Imagine these poems of the ordinary ascent,
blinking sightless at the cardinal points;
to make a series of journeys above ground,
to know the names holding up the sky.

Longbarrow Press marks the new season with a round-up of recent and forthcoming publications, interviews and recordings.

To coincide with the launch of online ordering for Longbarrow titles via PayPal (further details below), we’ve compiled a 40-minute CD drawing on the growing archive of ‘field recordings’ made by Longbarrow Press over the last 3 years. The first Longbarrow Press audio anthology (£4 inc P&P) is a rich, varied introduction to the press and its poets, and features James Caruth, Matthew Clegg, Kelvin Corcoran, Mark Goodwin, Lee Harwood, Rob Hindle, Andrew Hirst, Chris Jones and Alistair Noon reading their work in a range of settings, from kitchens to moorland, cellars to sea caves. Click here to view the full tracklisting and to order the CD.

We’ve redesigned our Publications page with full product descriptions for each title and PayPal buttons for online ordering. You can browse and order by clicking on the title of the publication, or search by author name via the Publications sub-menu. All prices are inclusive of UK postage and packing; we will be adding options for European and ROW orders during October.

The title of this post is borrowed from Andrew Hirst’s remarkable photo-series, Sketches for Autumn, a slideshow of which can be viewed here (Hirst’s ongoing work on Flickr, including his current series Leaf Studies and Sketches for Winter, can be viewed here). Hirst discusses his photography in a recent interview with Jana Kománková on the Czech website Proti šedi.

Continuing the autumnal theme, we’re posting Matthew Clegg’s ‘Trig Points’ sequence on Twitter throughout October (a haiku a day). Click here to follow Longbarrow Press on Twitter; you can listen to Clegg and guitarist Simon Heywood performing ‘Trig Points’ here (scroll down the page). Following the recent launch of Clegg’s pamphlet Lost Between Stations, we’ve posted his in-depth discussion of the sequence with poet Fay Musselwhite on the In Conversation page. You can also hear an interview with Brian Lewis of Longbarrow Press (conducted by Peter Spafford for elfm as part of the station’s Side Salad) here (the interview is eight minutes long and starts at around the 32 minute mark).

Several new publications are due from Longbarrow in the coming weeks: Andrew Hirst’s triptych Hello Dolly, Alistair Noon’s Swamp Area and Across the Water (two new pamphlets) and Kelvin Corcoran’s Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee’s Face will appear between now and December. Further details will be posted here and on the Forthcoming page. Finally… the Longbarrow Press recording programme continues, with recent uploads to our SoundCloud sites including Andrew Hirst’s Frome XIV, Chris Jones’ Wicker and James Caruth’s Quaker Grave.

Longbarrow Press is proud to announce the publication of Matthew Clegg’s Lost Between Stations on 25 September. This sequence of narrative poems is presented as seven ‘loose leaves’ folded into a specially designed wallet, and is accompanied by a 4o minute CD of Clegg reading the poems on location in Leeds (click here to listen to the first poem in the sequence). Lost Between Stations will be available to order online (via PayPal) from 1 October and can also be purchased at the launch (see details below).

Lost Between Stations will be launched at The Red Deer in Sheffield on Sunday 25 September (8pm start). The sequence is given a suitably inventive presentation for this one-off event, with film, photography and music framing Clegg’s readings. Afterwards, Clegg will be joined by poet Fay Musselwhite for a discussion of the ideas and influences at work in Lost Between Stations. Free admission (and cake) – all welcome.

The many ‘stations’ the poet is ‘lost between’ include a sense of his ‘type’, of his vocation, and of his social status and affiliation. The poem is ‘lost between’ autobiography and fiction, between epic, narrative, lyric and drama – even between poetry and prose. It was written under a conviction that we are most alive precisely during these vulnerable and indeterminate periods.