Longbarrow Press

Mid-December through hospital windows
low noon light prickles where frost’s clung
to woods butting the road behind Urology.

Our current Featured Poem is Angelina D’Roza‘s ‘Wintering’, taken from her forthcoming debut collection Envies the Birds (out from Longbarrow Press in spring 2016). Click here to read the poem, and to listen to Angelina D’Roza reading ‘Wintering’ (accompanied by an field recording made at a hospital in Sheffield). The seasonal theme is also taken up by Rob Hindle in his poem ‘Winter in France’ (an extract from a work-in-progress provisionally titled The Grail Roads), which you can find here.

‘Trig Points opens with the poet waking to a morning in early autumn: the taste of smoke, whisky and starlight still on his palate. It plays out 25 haiku variations before returning to a differently nuanced reference to smoke and light: this time in late autumn. It is implied that the next morning will be the first of winter. The whisky has been drunk. The new season will wake up colder and darker: more smoke, less light.’  Matthew Clegg revisits other times and places in ‘Fugue, Shimmer, Pulse and Fuse’, a new essay focusing on the triangulation of ‘inner, domestic and outer worlds’ in his Lake District haiku sequence ‘Trig Points’ (which features in his second Longbarrow collection The Navigators), and the influence of Bach, Steve Reich and Nick Drake on the writing of the sequence. Click here to read the essay on the Longbarrow Blog.

Finally, our recording of Peter Riley’s The Ascent of Kinder Scout (shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Awards) is now available to hear through the Longbarrow Press site; click on the orange ‘Play’ button below to listen to the poem in its entirety. The Ascent of Kinder Scout is featured in our current range of special offers, as are recent Longbarrow hardbacks by Matthew Clegg, Mark Goodwin and Chris Jones; click here for further details and to order titles.

Photos by Karl Hurst

These last acts, a casting out…

The life and death of Spence Broughton, executed in 1792 for his part in robbing the Sheffield and Rotherham mail, is the subject of Rob Hindle‘s dramatic poem-sequence The Purging of Spence Broughton, a Highwayman. First published as a boxed edition by Longbarrow Press in 2009, it is now available as a hand-stamped, limited edition A5 landscape pamphlet, comprising the text of the 2009 publication and several additional poems, one of which (‘Pitchcapping’) is new and exclusive to this edition. You can order the pamphlet via the secure PayPal links below:
£5 (inc UK P&P)

£7 (inc Europe P&P)

£8.50 (inc Rest of World P&P)

Hindle’s ‘Pitchcapping’ is our current Featured Poem; you can read it here. Click here for more details of The Purging of Spence Broughton, including recordings, essays and short films. The pamphlet is also available as part of our new range of special offers, including Peter Riley’s The Ascent of Kinder Scout, newly shortlisted for the 2015 Michael Marks Awards. Click here for details of our current special offers.

On Wednesday 4 November (8pm – 9pm), the Poetry Library (at London’s Southbank Centre) hosts a collaborative reading by Matthew Clegg, Angelina D’Roza, Chris Jones and Fay Musselwhite, introduced and soundtracked by Brian Lewis. The event (part of the Poetry Library’s Special Edition series) is free, but advance booking is essential: click here for more details. Later in the same week, Longbarrow Press moves to Bloomsbury’s Conway Hall for the two-day Small Publishers Fair (Friday 6 – Saturday 7 November, 11am – 7pm, free), sharing a table with Gordian Projects, and sharing the hall with over 60 publishers from the UK and beyond. A full range of Longbarrow Press titles will be available; an exhibition and programme of readings and talks will also feature as part of the fair.

‘Objects don’t just disappear and in fact often can’t be wholly dismantled or destroyed. This fragmentation and unresolved materiality began to bother me. Beginning the series again I saw these strange remnants and discarded objects as somehow exotic and rare. I didn’t know what the objects were any longer, or what use, if any, they ever had. […]  The series of photographs will eventually fade to pale outlines and go with their objects into the ever-increasing swell of the void.’  Karl Hurst‘s notes on the (re)making of his photo-series ‘Modern Icons’ frame a critical commentary on the ‘void’ at the heart of cultural production (and consumption). Click here to read ‘Space Junk’ on the Longbarrow Blog.

Finally, we’ve uploaded audio podcasts of the second and third movements of ‘The Exchange’, a three-part collective performance by Matthew Clegg, Angelina D’Roza, Pete Green, Chris Jones and Fay Musselwhite at the Pop-Up Ruskin Museum, Sheffield, 30 September 2015. Listen to the podcasts below.
Second movement: The five poets introduce and read work by precursors and influences (illuminating the themes of labour, currency & reciprocity). Emily Dickinson, ‘I dwell in Possibility…’ (Angelina D’Roza), Kevin MacNeil, ‘painting trees’ (Pete Green), Gary Snyder, ‘Hay For the Horses’ (Chris Jones), Philip Levine, ‘Innocence’ (Fay Musselwhite), Thom Gunn, ‘All Do Not All Things Well’ (Chris Jones), Ted Hughes, ‘Her Husband’ (Fay Musselwhite), John Clare, ‘The Mores’ (Pete Green), JH Prynne, ‘Moon Poem’ (Angelina D’Roza), Louis MacNeice, ‘Autumn Journal: III’ (Matthew Clegg)

Third movement: ‘Vultures’ (Angelina D’Roza), ‘Hoopoe’s Cuckoo Song’ (Matthew Clegg), ‘Factory’ (Fay Musselwhite), ‘Amber’ (Pete Green), ‘The Workshop’ (Chris Jones), ‘To The Corner Shop and Back’ (Angelina D’Roza), ‘Bridges’ (Chris Jones), ‘To John Clare’ (Pete Green), ‘Here I Spill’ (Fay Musselwhite), ‘Meadowhall’ (Chris Jones), ‘Li Po’s Letter to Rumi’ (Matthew Clegg).