Longbarrow Press

Longbarrow Press reissues several of its acclaimed pamphlets this month as part of a new series of special offers.  The first package features the pamphlet and CD editions of Matthew Clegg‘s Lost Between Stations (2011), his sequence Officer (2007) and a handmade, limited Matthew Clegg postcard.  The second package includes Kelvin Corcoran‘s 2011 sequence Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee’s Face (40 page pamphlet and 38 minute audio CD), his broadside Learning to Play the Harp
(2009) and a handmade, limited Kelvin Corcoran postcard.  Both packages are priced at £12 (inclusive of UK p&p) and make an ideal (and affordable) introduction to the work of the press.  An additional piece of Longbarrow Press ‘ephemera’ will also be included with orders received in August.  October 2014 update: these offers have now ended.  You can also order these items separately via the Matthew Clegg and Kelvin Corcoran pages on this site.

‘I wanted ‘here’ and ‘elsewhere’, ‘home’ and ‘away’…’  Matthew Clegg‘s memoir of his formative encounters with the poetry of Derek Walcott is one of two new pieces on the Longbarrow Blog; click here to read his appreciation of Omeros and The Schooner ‘Flight’ in ‘Meeting and Melting’.  Chris Jones considers the fate of ‘landmark’ poetry anthologies in ‘The New, New, New Poetry: A Consumer’s Guide’, revisiting anthology introductions and commentaries drawn from the last 50 years; click here to read his survey of the changing ‘state of play’ in the UK poetry landscape.

Finally, all three parts of Pilgrimage: a walk through The Footing (recorded in Sheffield on 14 June 2014) are now available to hear via the player below (scroll down for full list of poems performed). The Footing is still available from Longbarrow Press (£12 inc UK P&P); click here for more details (and to order copies).

Part One: ‘Three Night Walks: III’ (Andrew Hirst); ‘The Bench’ (Angelina Ayers); ‘Death and the Gallant 1: The Adoration of the Magi’ (Chris Jones); ‘From from a St Juliot to Beyond a Beeny: Kilometer 2′ (Mark Goodwin); ‘Parish’ (James Caruth).
Part Two: ‘Contra Flow’ (Fay Musselwhite; ‘Ball Street Bridge’ (Angelina Ayers); ‘Attercliffe to the General Cemetery’ (Rob Hindle); ‘Quaker Grave’ (James Caruth); ‘Death and the Gallant 5: Saint James the Great’ (Chris Jones); ‘Memorial’ (James Caruth); ‘Path Kill’ (Fay Musselwhite); ‘From from a St Juliot to Beyond a Beeny: Kilometer 5′ (Mark Goodwin).
Part Three: ‘Ecgbert’ (Rob Hindle); ‘Stone Walls and Snowgates’ (Angelina Ayers); ‘From from a St Juliot to Beyond a Beeny: Kilometer 7′ (Mark Goodwin); ‘Closed Order’ (James Caruth); ‘Death and the Gallant 8: Death and the Gallant’ (Chris Jones); ‘Impasse’ (Fay Musselwhite); ‘A Stone’ (James Caruth).

Following the presentation of Pilgrimage: a walk through The Footing at Sheffield’s Bank Street Arts earlier in June, we’ve uploaded an audio recording of the first of the evening’s three parts. A specially curated performance focusing on the relationship between movement and memorial, Pilgrimage included readings from all seven poets featured in The Footing: Angelina Ayers, James Caruth, Mark Goodwin, Rob Hindle, Andrew Hirst, Chris Jones and Fay Musselwhite. Part One: Three Night Walks: III (Andrew Hirst); The Bench (Angelina Ayers); Death and the Gallant I: The Adoration of the Magi (Chris Jones); From from a St Juliot to Beyond a Beeny: Kilometre 2 (Mark Goodwin); Parish (James Caruth).

Pilgrimage was preceded by Chinese Lanterns, a bold new interpretation of a recent sequence by Matthew Clegg (featured in his collection West North East), devised and performed by Clegg and Andrew Hirst. Here’s a short film of the two poets negotiating the streets of 21st century Hillsborough (via the ‘displaced’ personae of the classical Chinese poets Li Po and Tu Fu) in ‘Moving with Thought’:

On the Longbarrow Blog, Brian Lewis reflects on the five-year development of the Longbarrow Press anthology The Footing, and the central roles of craft and collaboration in determining the routes toward (and beyond) the book: click here to read ‘The pace of The Footing‘ (originally presented at the Midsummer Poetry Festival Symposium on Anthologies and Anthologising). The anthology also provides us with our new ‘Featured Poem’: James Caruth‘s ‘Memorial’ (featured in his sequence ‘Tithes’, with which The Footing opens). Click here to read the poem; you can also listen to Caruth reading the poem (on location in Bowcroft Cemetery, Stannington, Sheffield) below.