On Friday 21 and Saturday 22 March, the longest running artists book fair outside of London returns to Leeds, showcasing the work of 40 artists and small publishers in the central court of Leeds Art Gallery and the adjoining space of Leeds Central Library (both spaces are on the first floor). Longbarrow Press will be among the stallholders at PAGES Artists Book Fair (sharing a table with ​Intergraphia); we’ll have a full range of titles available to browse and buy. The fair is open from 11am to 5pm on Friday and 11am to 4pm on Saturday (with short poetry and prose readings from 1pm on Saturday). Leeds Art Gallery & Leeds Central Library, The Headrow, LS1 3AA. Admission free; all welcome, no booking required. Click here for more details.

“The crunchiness and almost tactile materiality of the language, its naming, the punchy colour of the geographical range, its concreteness, its objective flair, are near to awe-inspiring… This spirited, astonishing, bewildering collection is one of the best long poems I have read, transformatory, guilt-making, tough in surmise and Gothic splendours of the imagination.” Steve Ely‘s symphonic poem Eely is among the books reviewed in the current issue of Blackbox Manifold; click here to read Adam Piette’s detailed appraisal of the collection. Ely discusses the development of the book (and the influence of Geoffrey Hill) with Chris Jones in an episode of The Two-Way Poetry Podcast; you can listen to the conversation here. On Saturday 19 April, Steve Ely leads a three-hour outdoor workshop at the site of the decommissioned and demolished coal-fired power station at Thorpe Marsh, near Doncaster. Click here for further information and to book a place.

“To recognise Japonica is to know it again, as though something laid down in memory surfaces with its flowering, a cluster of pink pressed between pages, and now, years later, recovered.” Our current Featured Poem is ‘Against the Blue of Longing, the Proximity of Green’ from Angelina D’Roza‘s new collection The Blue Hour; you can read it here. Eely, The Blue Hour, and other Longbarrow Press titles are available to browse and buy here.