Posted on

ANOTHER SIDE OF VERVE POETRY PRESS

ANNOUNCING ALL OF OUR AUTUMN PUBLISHING!!! 🙂

Luke Kennard, Rupinder Kaur, Nafeesa Hamid, Lunar Poetry Podcasts, Matt Abbott, Jenna Clake, Hannah Swings, Polarbear

Well we told you we had some exciting plans to announce for the coming Autumn, didn’t we? The press is tramping on wonderfully, and is developing new strands as it goes. Let us explain…

Our DEBUT COLLECTIONS SERIES continues apace this Autumn. Following on from super Spring debut’s by press co-founder Amerah Saleh as well as Casey Bailey and Leon Priestnall, this series, featuring young and exciting poets local to Birmingham continues to grow and delight from September onwards. This project sits at the heart of the press. It is our reason for being, and we will always be heavily focussed on this important work. Which is why, coming this Autumn, we   are looking forward to publishing Rooh by Rupinder Kaur, Besharam by Nafeesa Hamid, and nearer Christmas, as yet untitled debut collections by Kamil Mahmood & Hannah Swings. Both Rooh and Besharam are available to read  about and pre-order on our website HERE. Kamil & Hannah’s books remain shrouded in secrecy for a little longer, but we know they will be incredible!

Rooh by Rupinder Kaur
Besharam by Nafeesa Hamid

But through our close links with Verve Poetry Festival, we have also started to bump into other opportunities to get things into print that need and deserve to be read, and a couple of these are coming this Autumn too.

Two Little Ducks by Matt Abbott

MATT ABBOTT has always been a big supporter of our festival, and produced an excellent showcase for us at Verve 18 under the banner of his NYMPHS & THUGS spoken word record label. Meanwhile, his one man poetry show – Two Little Ducks – has been developing into a storming performance piece at Edinburgh and elsewhere, and this Autumn, Matt is embarking on a 22 date tour of the UK with his show. You can read more about this HERE. But suffice to say, when the opportunity arose to put this wonderful piece into book form along with a fair few individual poems that Matt has written over the same period we knew we had little choice. We are thrilled to be publishing Two Little 

Duckss on National Poetry Day (Oct 4th 2018) and on the day after that, Matt will be launching both the tour and his book at Waterstones in Birmingham. You can get your tickets HERE.

Similarly, David and Lizzie Turner have been an important part of Verve Poetry Festival since it started. Like Verve, their series of podcast interviews – LUNAR POETRY PODCASTS – which is beginning to get the audiences it deserves, promotes poetry as a broad church that should be celebrated for all it’s many and varied forms, and they have featured some of the key names in UK contemporary poetry, without limiting themselves to the poetry mainstream. To celebrate their fourth year, we are helping them publish ‘Why Poetry? – The Lunar Poetry Podcasts Anthology’. And what an anthology it is – featuring poems from a large selection of the poets they have featured…

'Why Poetry?' by Lunar Poetry Podcasts

from Helen Mort to Kim Moore, from Jane Yeh to Mary-Jean Chan, from Melissa Lee-Houghton to Luke Kennard, from Susannah Dickey to Travis Alabanzer and everywhere in between. The anthology also featured extracts from each poets’ interview. The whole makes for a wonderful and thought provoking engagement with poetry both as form and as performance. This anthology will be published on Sep 27 2018 – watch our for Lunar Poetry’s launches around that date.

This Autumn we will also be launching our NEW EXPERIMENTAL PAMPHLET SERIES. This series will offer opportunities for poets – either local or friends of Verve festival – who perhaps already have collections, to do something a little different, or perhaps to work with someone on a joint project. Our pamphlets   will be printed locally, will be lovely to hold and look at and will be limited to  only 250 copies. Once they are gone, they are gone!

Tuffle Hound - Luke Kennard

We are absolutely bowled over to be able to announce that kicking off the pamphlet series will be LUKE KENNARD’sfirst pamphlet since 2012 – Truffle Hound. More resolutely prose than any of his previous books of poetry, here Luke allows his childhood (imagined or otherwise) to flood into the foreground, while his present (factual or fake news) distorts and fractures as if his life were being directed by David Lynch and Terry Gilliam and neither could agree whether horror or comedy should dominate. Dogs, cigarettes, children and pills shouldn’t really be permitted to mix should they? Here they are a heady mixture indeed!

Luke’s pamphlet drops on Sep 6, and will be followed nearer Christmas by two more! One from recently crowned Eric Gregory poet JENNA CLAKE, who’s debut collection, FORTUNE COOKIE has already been greeted with such acclaim. And one from the wonderful JASMINE GARDOSI! Jasmine’s will be her first ever book, can you believe, and will be amazing! 🙂

                         STILL READING? Good – because lastly, and quite possibly           mostly, the best news of all!

Sometimes (we hope often) a poet of note will give us some of his poems to publish just because they like us, or because we are small and in Birmingham, or just because. And we will be happy and honoured to put them in a book because not only are the poems amazing, but they are rooted firmly in the city we love – are, in fact, almost a love letter to the city itself.

 

POLARBEAR’S ‘SECOND CITY TRILOGY’ is an excellent example of this. Containing three long poems – ‘If I Cover My Nose, You Can’t See Me’, ‘Old Me’ and ‘Return’ – that are close to Steven ‘Polarbear’ Camden’s heart, taken together these performance pieces stack up to become the poet’s love song to the city. It is a city that the direction of his life has taken him away from, but where he’s always happy to return. As the poems progress they move too, from simple spoken word piece to fully fledged dramatic work. We are thrilled to be able to bring them to you on Nov 29!

Steven 'Polarbear' Camden

SO there you have it! Our Autumn list! We are thrilled with the quality of it, the variety of it, but mostly with the way that, while it is changing, it is still resolutely US!
We hope you agree and are as excited as we are! 🙂

OUR LAST AND FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT for now is a hold the date announcement…

 

HOLD THIS DATE - 30/11/18!!!!!!

Most of you will already know how good at performing Verve Poetry Press poets are! So on 30/11/18 you are in for a real treat. On this date, OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY END OF YEAR EARLY CHRISTMAS BASH will take place in the Glee Club Studio on Hurst St, Birmingham. And will feature EVERY SINGLE POET THAT WE HAVE PUBLISHED OR WILL PUBLISH THIS YEAR!!! We are limited to 130 tickets for this venue and they will absolutely sell out. So please don’t be late. When the tickets go on sale (mid Sept) book yours straight away. You have been warned! 🙂

Casey Bailey
Amerah Saleh
Leon Priestnall
Nafeesa Hamid

We for one can’t wait!!!


Happy Poeting! 🙂

@Vervepoetrypres
https://vervepoetrypress.com
mail@vervepoetrypress.com

Posted on

VERVE POETRY PRESS: SIX MONTHS IN…

Amerah Saleh launching I Am Not From Here - April 20, Waterstones Birmz.

6th June 2018 – The picture above brings back fond memories of the April launch of our first two collections for Amerah Saleh and Casey Bailey. What a night that was – 160 people crammed into Waterstones Birmz to hear seven guest poets and Amerah and Casey perform their hearts out! We’ve been overwhelmed with the support we’ve been shown since, both in our home city and beyond, and our two collections have gone down a storm! If you still haven’t got yours, you can get them here – they are both super reads!

Verve Poetry Press Logo

SIX MONTHS AND COUNTING

This month marks our half year as a working press, and what a six months it’s been. You can read our story from the beginning in our previous blog:  VPP – The Story So Far

We’ve been having a glorious time, bringing out books, signing poets, making connections, becoming the press we want to be. We’ve planned our publication schedule right through to February 2019 (when the next Verve Poetry Festival will take place, in case you didn’t know:)) We will be announcing this in full soon, and have a teaser for you at the bottom of this newsletter. We have some very exciting news up our sleeves!

BUT BEFORE THAT, WE HAVE THIS!

June 22 2018 sees us launch our next two collections. What a pair of books they are, and what a wonderful launch night we have planned!

Click above for tickets to this wonderful event.

Leon Priestnall’s Bennetts Hill Blues is published on Thursday June 21st and will be available through all the usual channels  – our site, from Leon himself, to order from all good bookshops in store and online – from that date onwards. It is an amazing book of sharp observation, magical turns of phrase, and old fashioned sensibilities told through the eyes of a pained post-modernist. This performer of note has performed his way onto the page in great style.

Nafeesa Hamid’s Besharam is a wonderful book by a young poet writing well beyond her years. This book won’t be published until September 2018…

Cover Bennetts Hill Blues
Cover Besharam

…but will be available to purchase at the launch as well as from Nafeesa at various feature spots at spoken word events across the summer. Those who pre-order through our site this summer will also receive their book ahead of publication and postage free. It is an incredible book.

At the launch event on June 22 Leon and Nafeesa will be supported by six excellent poets each of whom have a guest poem in one the the collections. They are Yasmina Silva, Jack Crowe, Zeddie, Scarlett Ward, Mina Mekic and Bethany Slinn. Do join us if you can get to Waterstones Birmingham – it will be an ace night. Tickets available here.

AND THEN WHAT?

You want more? So we’ve already told you about the other collections we have in the pipe line for the Autumn. Rupinder Kaur will be publishing her much awaited debut Rooh in September, followed by two as yet untitled collections from Kamil Mahmood and Hannah Swings in October and November. These debut collections by Birmingham poets are the reason for Verve Poetry Press. You will hear much more about these wonderful books soon.

But we are also branching out a little in the autumn by publishing a small number of books that relate more closely to Verve Poetry Festival – you will hear how.  AND we are launching a small experimental pamphlet strand featuring authors who already have collections out or in the works, letting their hair down in various ways. These books will be exciting and interesting and add something to our main collection strand.

As we said, you will hear more about this in our next news-letter. But to keep you entertained, and guessing, here is a little collage we have made to give you a clue as to who we will be publishing. We think we may have created a monster! 🙂

WE THINK THAT’S ABOUT IT FOR NOW.

Now that you’ve found our blog, we’d love you to sign up to our mailing list – that way when our news comes out each month it will just drop into your inbox – how much easier for everyone! If you’d like to sign up you can do that here.  

Our next newsletter will contain details of ALL of our remaining publishing for the year, news of the first Verve Poetry Press Festival Showcase which is happening this Autumn, and a cover reveal for Rupinder Kaur’s Rooh. We can’t wait. We hope you can’t either!

Happy poeting!

VPP

Posted on

VERVE POETRY PRESS: THE STORY SO FAR…

3rd May 2018 – So, we have been SO busy since our launch in February – too busy it seems to sort out a working website, and to start blogging regularly. Well all that changes now. Here we are on a brand spanking new website (thanks to marvellous Verve friend Emma Scott) and we will be blogging and newslettering on a monthly basis from now on…

So what’s been happening? And why so busy?  Here’s why…

TWO ANTHOLOGIES LAUNCHED

February saw the first two Verve Poetry Press releases at two very special Birmingham occasions.

Wild Dreams & Louder Voices was released to tie in with the fifth anniversary celebrations of Poetry Jam – the regular open -mic only poetry event run by Verve friends Beatfreeks. Poetry Jam is absolutely one of the most important poetry nights in the city – a safe space where many of Birmingham’s best poets cut their teeth and where the poets of the future a performing RIGHT NOW! Their fifth anniversary birthday bash was held at our wonderful Town Hall and what a night it was – over 500 attended, and the quality of the poetry was sky high. What an event to launch our Poetry Jam Anthology at! The book contains poems from a broad range of local poets, all of whom have performed at Poetry Jam over the years. The contents list is a role call of poetical excellence, both realised and emerging. Names such as Jasmine Gardosi, Joe Cook, Polarbear and Spoz sit alongside names you will certainly hear from in a big way one day – Ahlaam Moledina, Yasmina Silva and Dennis Muhirwa Nkurunziza to name but three.  

Cover of Wild Dreams & Louder Voices
Cover of It All Radiates Outwards

Barely a week later and we had our second anthology good to go, this time to launch at our sister festival Verve Poetry Festival. An altogether different beast, It All Radiates Outwards features the winning, commended and commissioned poems from our city themed poetry competition and event. Judged by Luke Kennard, the calibre of the entries was sky high. The book reflects this, containing a heady mixture of approaches to the idea and reality of city living by ‘name’ poets such as Jacqueline Saphra, Claire Trevien, Polly Atkin, Roy McFarlane as well as poets to watch: Stephanie Papa, Vik Shirley, Sarah Marina and David Turner. When competition winner C.I.Marshall flew all the way from North Carolina to appear at the Verve City event, we knew we were onto something. Our City Poems anthology is a book to be proud of.

A HOST OF POETS SIGNED…

Hands Signing A Contract

We have been very busy too talking to local poets about their projects and agreeing schedules for the publication of their collections. We have some wonderful books coming along as the year progresses. June 21 will see the release not only of Leon Priestnall’s debut collection Bennetts Hill Blues, but also Nafeesa Hamid’s first book, Besharam. Both titles launch at a special event at Waterstones Birmingham on June 22, which we can hardly wait for. And both can be pre-ordered now if you go to our site shop! At Verve Poetry Press, if you pre-order you don’t pay postage!

Then beyond the summer, we have Rupinder Kaur’s debut, Rooh which we are really excited for, along with as yet untitled collections from Kamil Mahmood and Hannah Swings. We have three or four other titles in pipe-line too which will shock and delight you, but which we aren’t ready to announce quite yet. It all adds up to a bumper year ahead for Verve Poetry Press!

TWO COLLECTIONS PUBLISHED

You will already know our big news! Just two weeks ago, we published and launched our two debut collections for two amazing Birmingham poets, Amerah Saleh and Casey Bailey! Press co-founder Amerah’s wonderful I Am Not From Here is as glorious as anticipated, exploring the fractured nature of her own identity and a world that, piece by piece, word by hard fought word, is only just beginning to make some kind of sense. Casey’s book, Adjusted, grapples in his trademark musical verse with becoming and losing a parent in the same year and is both a moving and uplifting delight. 

Cover of I Am Not From Here
Cover of Adjusted.

The launch was at Waterstones Birmingham and what an event it was! 160 people watched guest poets Hannah Swings, Afrah Yafai, Reuben Field, Raza Hussain, Sophie Wheeler, Adjei Dsane and Ahlaam Moledina perform single poems before Casey and Amerah took to the stage. What an atmosphere! What a great way to properly launch this press for Birmingham!

We urge you to get hold of these two books. They really are thoroughly worth a read. They are available to purchase at our website shop, but you can also order them online or in store from ANY bookshop. (Waterstones Birmingham, Foyles Birmingham, London Review Bookshop and Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham are our current stockists.) They are also available to borrow from The National Poetry Library in London’s Southbank Centre and from our very own Library of Birmingham.

Casey And Amerah With Books

AND FINALLY, A WEBSITE…

We do hope you like it. It feels wonderful to finally have an online home. We have all the usual stuff – a SHOP to buy our books from, a statement of intent on our ABOUT page, a way of CONTACTing us. AND a MAILING LIST which we urge you to sign up to as this really is the best way to hear all our news and receive our special offers. On our GALLERY page you will find some pictures from Amerah and Casey’s awesome launch-night. And our EVENTS page is something we’re really proud of. Our poets are excellent performers and are out and about performing NOW! (Esp Casey, who we can’t seem to get off the stage at the moment!). If you want to catch any of them, check out our calendar. We know you won’t be disappointed. 

Shot of Website Home Page

SO, NOW YOU’RE ALL CAUGHT UP … We hope you like it here. You’re welcome any time. Take your time and have a good look around. There’ll be more from us soon. In the meantime, don’t be a stranger 🙂

Posted on

Launching the Verve Poetry Press [Historical]

We have been stunned at how popular Verve Poetry Festival has been and how happy people have been with our full spectrum of poetry approach, where beginners can rub shoulders with top name poets, where spoken word and page poets appear together, where audiences and cultures mix and engage with each other.

However, we have always also been determined to find ways to help bring the wonderful poetry scene we have here in the West Midlands to people’s notice, and this we have discovered is difficult for a festival on its own to achieve. We wanted to see if we could help give some of the excellent local poets a hand-up – something to show the world and help them spread their message. It soon became clear to us how that might happen.

 

SaveSave

Verve Poetry Festival now has a sister press: The Verve Poetry Press. It launched 8th February and has an ambitious vision — to publish wonderful, lively, challenging poetry that’s going to tear up assumptions and change the poetry world. All of the Verve fun, originality, and excitement can now be found in printed form.  Read more on about the Press and what to expect in the following blog. 

Our full 2018 and 2019 stable to be announced soon!