Longbarrow Press

‘Before the bomb sites and bad houses could be scratched from the streets, before a vision of high-rise living could be built up from sketches, temporary solutions to the housing crisis were being pieced together at the city’s edges: the quick, new prefabs, plotted in 1944 and delivered within weeks of the war’s end, their concrete walls framed in timber or steel, the steel recycled from Anderson shelters.’
This month’s new post on the Longbarrow Blog is a social history of Swindon, a working town in the south of England. The essay reflects on its growth as a trade centre, its transition from market town to railway town in the 19th century, and the challenges of the post-war environment; it is also a memoir of a self-build housing scheme, and of one of the men who took part in it. Click here to read ‘Self-build’ by Brian Lewis.

‘The exchanges that take place are a form of heightened listening…’  A new interview with Brian Lewis for Opus Independents
highlights the ethics and methods that have shaped the development of Longbarrow Press, with an emphasis on the role of landscape, collaboration and field-based research. Click here to read the interview. ‘It is this retracing of well-trodden paths through modern history in the shoes of the 99% that makes Broughton’s tragic life seem so close and familiar to the contemporary reader.’ Jack Windle’s close reading of Rob Hindle‘s dramatic sequence The Purging of Spence Broughton, a Highwayman (recently reissued by Longbarrow Press in an expanded pamphlet edition) places individual episodes and the wider arc of the narrative in an illuminating historical context, and offers some insights into the roles of contemporary figures such as the songwriter Joseph Mather. Click here to read the review. Rob Hindle discusses and reads from The Purging of Spence Broughton in the unique atmosphere of Sheffield Manor Lodge (Manor Lane, Sheffield, S2 1UJ) on Monday 7 March. Click here for further information and to book tickets.

We’ve created a new Podcasts page to showcase the extended sequences, poetry walks, field recordings and collective performances we’ve created since 2008. Click here to browse and listen to the audio recordings. Our most recent podcast, documenting the Mexborough canal walk led by Matthew Clegg and Ray Hearne in May 2015, is available to hear below:

This year’s States of Independence one-day independent press fair takes place at De Montfort University in Leicester on Saturday 12 March (10.30am-4.30pm, admission free), with more than 70 writers presenting readings and workshops throughout the day. You are also welcome to visit the Longbarrow Press stall (with a full range of books, pamphlets and other objects). Click here to view the full programme of readings, workshops, displays and talks.

There is nothing of sorrow here
except the dead end, its terraced shadow.

Our current Featured Poem is ‘Kipling Road’ by Rob Hindle, the first poem in his sequence ‘Hillsborough to Middlewood, February 1931’ (in the Longbarrow Press anthology The Footing). Click here to read the poem, and to listen to Rob Hindle
reading ‘Kipling Road’ on location in Sheffield. ‘Hillsborough to Middlewood, February 1931’ retraces the short journey between Hindle’s great grandparents’ house and the South Yorkshire Asylum, where their son Harold died; this ‘one-way journey’ is also the subject of a new essay by Brian Lewis, in which the terrain mapped by the sequence is re-walked and reconsidered. Click here to read ‘Dead Ends’ on the Longbarrow Blog.

The Longbarrow archive of our Featured Poems is now accessible via a new menu, with over 50 poems indexed on separate pages (many with audio recordings and short films). Click here to browse the index. We’ve also updated our recent History; our year-in-review for 2015 can be found here, illustrated with some previously unseen photos and soundtracked by a selection of podcasts.

‘And this is where the map runs out, cutting the airport and regatta in half, two miles east of the meridian.’ Our second new post on the Longbarrow Blog revisits the dossier on London’s Docklands compiled by the poet Ken Smith 30 years ago, a series of cryptic despatches from the east end’s fractured and raided ‘enterprise zone’. Click here to read ‘The House of Numbers’ by Brian Lewis.

Finally, Pete Green and Fay Musselwhite read a selection of ecologically-themed poems on Tuesday 16 February as part of The University of Sheffield’s interdisciplinary Festival of 10bn. The evening-long ‘Cafe Conversations’ event also takes in short films, talks and discussions, and a selection of Longbarrow Press titles will be available to browse and buy from our stall. Coffee Revolution, University of Sheffield Student’s Union, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TG, Tuesday 16 February, 7pm start (poetry from 8.30pm). Admission free; all welcome.