Longbarrow Press is delighted to announce the publication of Skin, the second full-length collection by Chris Jones.  Skin reflects on the ties that bind us, taking in the complex layering of human relationships and the cells and tissues of the body itself. The poems consider the role of the individual within the home and the institution – ranging from ‘Sentences’, which focuses on the hierarchies embedded in prison culture, to ‘Miniatures’, a series of ‘portraits’ drawn from the experience of fatherhood – while also affirming the creative collaborations that link poets to artists and musicians. Skin is a book of bonds, reaching back, reaching out; a sensory exploration of the world we inhabit and try to make sense of.

A beautifully produced 96-page hardback, Skin is now available from Longbarrow Press for just £12.99 inc UK P&P (click here to order Skin with Matthew Clegg’s new hardback collection The Navigators for just £24 inc UK P&P – saving £1.98 on the RRP). A limited edition CD with three podcasts recorded in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire churches (in the traces of Jones’s sequence ‘Death and the Gallant’) is also included with initial orders. You can order the book via the Skin microsite (which also has poems, recordings and essays relating to the book), or by clicking on the relevant PayPal link below (major debit cards accepted – no PayPal account required):

Skin: £12.99 (inc UK P&P + ltd edition CD)

Skin: £16 (inc Europe P&P + ltd edition CD)

Skin: £18 (inc Rest of World P&P + ltd edition CD)

Skin is launched on Wednesday 10 June (7.30pm start) at The Shakespeare, 146-148 Gibraltar Street, Sheffield S3 8UB with a specially devised evening of readings and introductions by Chris Jones (and accompanying projections by Brian Lewis). Admission free; all welcome. Our current ‘Featured Poem’ is the first of the ‘Cells’ haiku sequences in Skin; click here to read the poems. Chris Jones considers the development of the collection in ‘The Skin We Live In’, a new post for the Longbarrow Blog; click here to read his reflections on ‘a trove of memories, tangible, potent, ever-present, that are also moving away from me at the speed of light’.

Our summer events programme continues with Fay Musselwhite‘s walk from Rivelin Glen to the edge of the Peak District on Saturday 20 June, which features a new selection of her poems set in and around this tree-lined valley, interspersed with poems by others and the writings of John Ruskin, whose legacy is revisited as part of the Ruskin in Sheffield programme of walks, talks and events. Join us as we trace the river’s industrial legacy, its unique ecology, and its relationship to Ruskin and the city. Click here for more details. Please note that this event is now fully booked.

We return to The Shakespeare on Thursday 25 June (7.30pm start) for the Sheffield launch of Matthew Clegg‘s new collection The Navigators. Ray Hearne, Fay Musselwhite and Simon Heywood will help Clegg bring the book to life in performance, with Ray lending his voice to the mythical and historical poems, Fay speaking for the world of landscape and creatures, and Clegg voicing the more intimate and personal lyrics. Guitarist Simon Heywood will offer musical leitmotifs signalling three modes: epiphany, thanksgiving and storm warning. Three voices, three 20-minute sets, exploring a range of tones from the celebratory to the elegiac. Admission free: all welcome.

Listen to the 2007 arrangement of the haiku sequence ‘Trig Points’ below (featured in The Navigators, and revisited for the launch), performed by Clegg and Heywood (thanks to Robin Vaughan-Williams for recording and broadcasting this version on his Spoken Word Antics Radio Show). Click here for more information about The Navigators.

Photos by Emma Bolland