Both come first:
the light and the lights,
reports from our birds
and the waking flights.

Longbarrow Press is delighted to announce the publication of QUAD, a new pamphlet by Alistair Noon. The cycle of 64 four-line poems (arranged four to a page) is presented in a square format pamphlet (148mm x 148mm), hand-stitched and hand-stamped. You can read four poems from QUAD here (and listen to Noon reading a further selection), and order the pamphlet below:

UK orders (£5 + 0.85p postage)

Europe orders (£5+ £2.60 postage)

Rest of World orders (£5+ £3.25 postage)

Click here to read Alistair Noon’s pieces for the Longbarrow Blog.

The 2017 South Yorkshire Poetry Festival is currently underway, with a varied programme of readings and performances. Among the featured events is ‘Vanishing Point’, a Sheffield city walk led by poets Angelina D’Roza and Pete Green that spans Lady’s Bridge and the Cholera Monument, tracking central Sheffield’s intersecting lines of road, river and rail, scaling and exploring its iconic and historic sites, and reflecting on its status as a city of sanctuary, before reaching a hilltop terminus with near-panoramic views. ‘Vanishing Point’ takes place on Sunday 28 May (11am start); click here for more information and to reserve places on the walk. The full festival programme can be accessed here.

‘A transitive verb has a subject: I’m singing a song, you’re making a fork. An intransitive verb has none: I’m singing, you’re making. In this version of Sheffield verb matters more than noun. The act of manufacturing is more significant than the (grammatical or manufactured) object. What you’re making has become less important than the fact that you’re making it.’  The ‘cultural narrative’ of Sheffield, and its efforts to reimagine (or rebrand) itself as a ‘city of making’ in a post-industrial era, is the focus of a new essay by Pete Green. ‘Model City’ addresses issues of civic identity and civic pride, and examines the processes through which Sheffield’s people and products can become subject to an inadvertent fetishisation, even as we affirm the city’s resourcefulness and individuality. Click here to read ‘Model City’. ‘For all our discord and unease, the working landscape belongs to us, and we to it; its history is part of our history. The narrative of a single site, its changes of use, is recounted through generations, passing into folk memory, local lore. What happens to these sites, and their stories, when the labour and the landscape have exhausted each other?’ Our second post on the Longbarrow Blog takes up the theme of England’s industrial legacies, and their visibility in the contemporary environment, with reference to the poetry of Matthew Clegg, Fay Musselwhite and Karl Hurst, the post-work terrain ‘caught between renunciation, remembering, and renewal.’ Click here to read ‘Ground Work’ by Brian Lewis. Matthew Clegg and Fay Musselwhite’s recent collections The Navigators and Contraflow are also discussed by Billy Mills and Peter Riley in two new reviews; click here to read Mills’s piece (on his Elliptical Movements blog), and click here to read Riley’s appraisal for The Fortnightly Review.

Finally, Longbarrow Press is delighted to be taking part in the Independent Publishers Book Fair at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield, on Saturday 10 June (11am – 6pm, admission free). This special one-day event brings some of our most innovative artists and independent presses together under one roof, including And Other Stories, Bradical, Comma Press, enjoy your homes, Girasol Press, Gordian Projects, Little Island Press, Longbarrow Press, Jean McEwan, Spirit Duplicator, The Poetry Business and Tilted Axis Press. The fair will include handmade artists’ books, poetry, fiction, art writing, literary criticism, zines, and much more. A not-to-be-missed opportunity to see and buy some beautiful editions, and to meet the publishers and artists involved. Click here for more details on the book fair website.