Longbarrow Press

“2.55am. To the north, a meteor, halfway between the heavens and the horizon. It happens in the moment that I lift my eyes from the road. It happens once and once only. It’s enough. To look out without looking. This must be the Quadrantids, named for Quadrans Muralis, an obsolete constellation.”  A few days into the new year, Brian Lewis set out on a night walk from Thorne to Goole, via the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, Keadby Wind Farm, the River Trent, the River Ouse and the Dutch River, picking up the thread of last year’s ‘Unrecovered Time’, and spanning thirty miles and three counties. Click here to read ‘Point Zero’.

“This tour de force of language, imagination, varied technique, almost obsessive scholarship and huge emotional force must rank among the most outstanding of recent long British poems.” Nick Cooke’s appraisal of Steve Ely‘s ‘symphonic poem’ Eely leads his winter selection on The High Window site; you can read the review here. Steve is one of six Longbarrow poets who will be taking part in Habitation, a themed, collective reading at The Harlequin, Sheffield, on Tuesday 21 April; the other readers are Angelina D’Roza, Pete Green, Rob Hindle, Chris Jones and Fay Musselwhite. The event is free, but places are limited: please click here to reserve your place on Eventbrite. A few days later, Longbarrow Press will be among the stallholders at the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair in London (Saturday 25 April) and the SIBFest Book Market in Sheffield (Sunday 26 April). Both events are free to attend. Click here for further details.

“The inventory is whatever will fit into two rucksacks and two carrier bags. To be hauled, on foot, between tram, train and tube. City to city.​ One year to the next.”  In late October, Small Publishers Fair returned to London for the annual gathering of artists, writers, presses and visitors. Longbarrow Press editor Brian Lewis was among the participating publishers; his account of the weekend can be found here. “The nature of a pop-up is that it is drawing to a close from the moment that it opens. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can help to give it focus and purpose.”  Several years ago, Longbarrow Press was part of SHIP, a ‘temporary collective’ of four independent publishers, vending their wares from a unit in Sheffield’s Moor Market. Brian Lewis live-tweeted a journal (of sorts) from the stall. Here it is, revisited, with some reflections on the experience.

“A life recovered in the moment of its telling, a city caught in the act of disappearing.” One morning in May 2025, Chris Jones and Brian Lewis recorded a conversation for Chris’s Two-Way Poetry Podcast series, which has invited more than twenty poets to share their thoughts on process, influence and craft since it launched in autumn 2023. The conversation was edited by Chris and uploaded in two instalments: both episodes are embedded in this post, prefaced by Chris’s written introductions, with an extract from Lewis’s ‘delivery journal’ to close.

Click here to browse and buy our current publications. You’ll receive a free copy of Inventory (a pamphlet drawing on twenty years of Longbarrow Press) with orders over £8.

On Friday 24 and Saturday 25 October, the Small Publishers Fair returns to the Conway Hall in Holborn, London, showcasing the work of over 60 publishers from across the UK and around the world, with an exhibition and a varied programme of readings and talks. Longbarrow Press will be among the stallholders (alongside ​Intergraphia) over the two days of the fair; we’ll have a full range of titles available to browse and buy. The fair is open from 11am to 7pm, with programmes of readings and talks in the afternoons (free, no booking required). Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London, WC1R 4RL. Admission free; all welcome. Click here for more details.

“The Dutch River was a course correction, completed in 1635, an attempt to alleviate the flooding caused by the re-routing of the Don several years earlier. It is still the Don, as it nears the Ouse, the Don turned brackish and tidal, it is more than the Don and less than the Don, all rivers and none.”  In July 2025, Longbarrow Press editor Brian Lewis embarked on a night walk via the waterways of South and East Yorkshire, departing Kirk Sandall at dusk, and arriving in Goole at dawn the next day. Click here to read ‘Dutch River’. “I grasp the top of one of the wooden posts, loosen the stake, and tear it from the soil. Then another. And again. It’s surprisingly easy. When I have cleared a way I stamp on the mesh. Over and over. It crumples like a flag.”  Two months later, Lewis returned to these waterways, extending the route from Leeds to Goole: a journey of forty miles, via the River Aire, the Aire and Calder Navigation, the New Junction Canal and the Dutch River, and all four ridings of Yorkshire. Click here to read ‘Unrecovered Time’.

Daybreak in the wreck of Dogger. Gulls drifting
over the slowly rising sea. Seals hauled out
on sandbanks, bleached ribs of stranded whales.
Dunlin and knot, swarming the mudflats,
armies of silt-spearing godwit and whaup.

Our current Featured Poem is ‘Storegga’ from Steve Ely’s new collection Eely; you can read it here.

“It felt as though the city’s cultural and economic power had been drained, or devolved to the outskirts. It doesn’t feel like that now. There’s a sense of circulation, or flow, and this has as much to do with people as it has to do with places.”
Two poetry readings – one in a former shop, one in a new shop – invite a consideration of Sheffield, its cultural networks, and the question of ‘localism’, as the city remakes itself, suburb by suburb. Click here to read ‘Urban Village’ by Brian Lewis.

Finally, The Two-Way Poetry Podcast, a series of interviews in which poet Chris Jones speaks to poets about their own creative inspirations and practice, is a few weeks into its third season. You can find new (and previous) episodes here.

Click here to browse and buy our current publications.