I lift a gift of conkers from September,
Wrapped up in Weston Park, and press and
Savour their cool smoothness and remember
Twenty autumns back…
“One of the central concerns of Sheffield Almanac is to what extent it’s desirable and indeed possible for a city to be different from other cities in the same modern, developed nation. Since the first edition was published, the Ikea outlet referred to in the first chapter has finally opened and the city centre has grown quieter with the Covid-era closure of many shops and pubs. However, the city’s ineffable gentleness of mood and “warming core of goodwill”, which attracted me to relocate here almost twenty years ago, seem remarkably unaltered.” Six years after it first appeared in print, Pete Green‘s debut pamphlet Sheffield Almanac is available in a new edition from Longbarrow Press. The second edition features a redesigned cover, and a new afterword by Green. Click here to order the pamphlet.
“Minibus travel is an excellent way to get to know people: a mental zig-zag of free-associating chat, sometimes intense, sometimes light, often punctuated by silent gazing out of the window, or with refreshment breaks in the chaotic bustle of motorway service stations. On the journey south we stopped at the Somerset village of East Coker to discuss T.S. Eliot’s poem of the same name: an opportunity to open doors into poetry’s spiritual potential in the tumultuous modern world.” In July 2023, a small group of students and lecturers spent four days at Hilfield Friary, Dorset, on a writing and reading retreat, exploring the life, poetry and journals of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, with excursions to nearby settlements, hills and cliffs. Matthew Clegg‘s account of the retreat (with photographs by Richi Lyle) reflects on polarization, connection, and the creative writing that developed at the Friary. Click here to read ‘Another Intensity’ on the Longbarrow Blog.
Like this, like light returning from one mirror
to another, we create each other.
Seven years after Envies the Birds appeared to wide acclaim, Longbarrow Press is delighted to announce the publication of The Blue Hour, the second full-length collection by Angelina D’Roza.
“Melancholic, beautifully contemplative poems, fusing binaries of past, present, memory and fiction, temporality and arrested time…”—Ágnes Lehóczky.
The Blue Hour is published as a 96-page hardback on 9 November; click here to order the book (at a special launch price). Click here to read a poem from The Blue Hour.
Finally, Chris Jones has devised and launched The Two-Way Poetry Podcast, a biweekly series of interviews where he speaks to poets about their own creative inspirations and practice. He reflects on the idea that when poets create poems, they are often ‘in conversation’ with other writers’ works. Click here to listen to Chris’s short introduction to the series. The first full podcast is a discussion with the poet Rob Hindle about William Blake’s poem ‘The Sick Rose’ and how it influenced his own ‘The Sick Rose’ (from his Longbarrow Press collection Sapo). Listen to it here.
Longbarrow Press 