…speech fills up
prepared corners like sand, the light threshing over
the marsh flats beyond, only the dark sweat of tankers
left for an horizon pushed to its limit.

Longbarrow Press is proud to announce the publication of a bold new work by Andrew Hirst (aka photo-grapher Karl Hurst). HELLO DOLLY is a triptych of long poems (‘Tithonus, 1972’, ‘Chappaquiddick, 1980’ and ‘Welund’s Lament’) presented as three individual landscape-format pamphlets with an accompanying 3″ CD of Hirst reading the poems at home in Sheffield. The themes explored in the poems include power (and its decline), public speech, and the failure of rhetoric, obliquely referencing ancient and contemporary myth through the personae of Tithonus (via Tennyson’s poem), Edward Kennedy and Wayland (or Wēland) the Smith. You can listen to Hirst reading ‘Welund’s Lament’ here. To order the three pamphlets and CD (packaged in a handmade, hand-stamped envelope) at the special price of £10 (inc UK p&p), please click here. Listen to Hirst discussing the poems in the podcast below:

Artist Paul Evans‘ collaborative projects continue with a new response to the landscapes of the Peak District created with Berlin-based poet Alistair Noon. The latest addition to the 2012 series of The Seven Wonders focuses on The Burbage Valley, which lies 8km north-west of Sheffield and is largely formed of millstone grit and shale. Evans has created a sequence of six drawings in response to Noon’s poem; the poem and drawings trace a route through the valley towards ‘the developing relicts’. You can read the poem and view the first of these drawings here. A short film comprising all six drawings, the poem and a soundtrack by Brian Lewis can be viewed here. Alistair Noon has also contributed a new essay to the Longbarrow Blog, reporting from (and reflecting on) the wealth redistribution demo that moved through Berlin on 29 September; click here to read ‘Traces of the Middle Ages’.

Becky Bowley, Nikki Clayton and Mark Goodwin reflect on their participation in Longbarrow Press: Scale (a programme of new films, artworks and performance that took place at Sheffield’s Bloc Projects in October) in a new text by Bowley and an edited conversation between Clayton and Goodwin. You can read and listen to their meditations on From the high ground our own Body here. A selection of Nikki Clayton’s photographs for the recent closer to ground to hear installation (which took place at Bank Street Arts in November) can be viewed here; a recording of Goodwin improvising with (and against) his ‘Stalker’ poem (made in the installation space) is available here.

Our current ‘Featured Poem’ is ‘Last Night’ by Fay Musselwhite; you can read the poem here and listen to Musselwhite reading the poem (on location in Walkley, Sheffield) here.