The Longbarrow Blog was set up in 2012 to create a focus for new essays, articles, reviews and other writings by editor and publisher Brian Lewis, Longbarrow Press poets, and other Longbarrow Press contributors and collaborators. Click here to read Matthew Clegg’s reappraisal of poet Josephine Dickinson, Chris Jones on place names and imaginative pilgrimages, Alistair Noon on the 21st century demo, and more.
Further essays by (and on) Longbarrow Press poets can be found below (some essays are downloadable as Word docs and PDFs; other links will redirect to external sites).
Matthew Clegg, Andrew Hirst, Chris Jones:
The river, the road and Sideways & Familiar
In 2008 and 2009 Longbarrow Press organised a series of poetry walks in Sheffield. The walks (led by Matthew Clegg and Chris Jones in 2008, and Andrew Hirst and Chris Jones in 2009) were designed to illuminate some of the iconic, hidden and historic sites of the city, with Matthew, Andrew and Chris reading and discussing poems that connect with this changing landscape. A unique package was given to the audiences for each of these walks, comprising a 22-minute CD of the poets reading their work on location in the city and a specially commissioned essay by Matthew Clegg. The two essays can be accessed here:
Pasts, Presents, Futures (The river, the road, 2008)
The Heart of the City (Sideways & Familiar, 2009)
Chris Jones’ essay on the River Don, his sequence At the end of the road, a river (which features in The river, the road), maps of the territory covered by the 2008 river walk and recordings of the poems are on his website. Matthew Clegg’s commentary on his sequence Edgelands (which also features in The river, the road) can be accessed here. You can listen to Chris and Matthew’s introduction to The river, the road here. Paul Yoward’s review of The river, the road can be accessed here.
Rob Hindle: Flights and Traverses
Rob Hindle has written five sequences and long poems (collectively titled ‘Flights and Traverses’) for the Longbarrow Press anthology The Footing (due spring 2013). The poems developed from ‘five walks in and around Sheffield, each taking as its stimulus the notion of a one-way journey made by people at different points in history’. In December 2010 and February 2011 Rob invited audiences to accompany him on two of these journeys, punctuating his readings from the sequences with extracts from contemporary accounts of the Blitz and observations on 1920s gang culture. The accompanying essays (originally issued with CDs of Rob reading the sequences on location) appear here:
Dore Moor to the Marples Hotel (December 2010)
Ganglands (Princess Street to the Wicker, February 2011)
Matthew Clegg on photography and sculpture
Matthew Clegg discusses his collaboration with photographer Karl Hurst on the sequence Cave Time and Sea Changes (first shown at Bloc Projects, Sheffield, in October 2012) here. His response to the work of Nigel Grimmer (commissioned by Bloc Projects to accompany Grimmer’s Bloc exhibition in April 2013) can be found here.
Andrew Hirst (Karl Hurst) on photography
Photographer and poet Andrew Hirst (aka Karl Hurst) discusses his ‘Up Against A Brick Wall’ series and the forces of history, banality and the sublime at work in (or absent from) contemporary photography in this fascinating essay.
Alistair Noon on Translocality
Alistair Noon’s essay on translocality and poetry (originally published in Bordercrossing Berlin, late 2007) appears here: Translocal Underground by Alistair Noon. ’The Idea of Translocality on Krymská’ (delivered by Noon at the Prague Microfest, 14 May 2011) can be found here. In 2009, Alistair Noon was interviewed by Kate Schapira and Elizabeth Bradfield for Mantis – click here to read the interview.
Andrew Hirst: The Frome Primer
Marlow Jones’ review of Andrew Hirst’s Frome pamphlets (first published in The Inky in 2009) appears here: Marlow Jones Frome review
Brian Lewis on Andrew Hirst’s The Snail Drunk
Brian Lewis’s 2004 essay on Andrew Hirst’s poem The Snail Drunk (first published in Staple 60) can be accessed here; the poem (published with the essay in Staple 60) can be accessed here.
