A new book and a priceless one, from Valley Press

Dear readers,

It's the first newsletter of 2015, and though the year may have changed, our mission at Valley Press remains the same: to bring you the best new literature we can find, in as nice a package as we can possibly manage. With this in mind, I'll kick things off by introducing you to our latest book, which is simply titled All.

All is the second collection of poetry from Canadian-born, Yorkshire-based poet Robert Powell. He started working on the poems that make up All in early 2008, and handed them to me around this time last year - so this book was six years in the making, seven if you include the last twelve months of editing and designing.

And it shows; every sentence, every word in this book seems to me to be in exactly the right place. It's a phenomenally good read, so I suggest you get stuck in straight away. You can read the first twenty-three pages here (scroll down to find the preview widget), and one of my other favourites on the author's page.

Once you've taken all that on board, you can of course buy a copy, or you may prefer to come to one of the launch events during March. The details are as follows:
 

Wednesday 4th March, 7pm
Waterstones, York
Coney Street, York, YO1 9QL, 01904 620784

Sunday 29th March, 2pm
The Orangery, Wakefield
Back Lane, Wakefield, WF1 2TG, 01924 215550

The York launch, which I shall be proudly attending, will also feature our own James Nash and the non-Valley (but still highly talented) poet Carole Bromley. Wakefield guests are to be confirmed, but will be excellent I'm sure.

In other news: congratulations are due to the Pocketful of Windows contributors and their enterprising editor Mr. Hodcroft - the 500th copy was sold earlier this week.  No small achievement!

A particular sales outlet asked me to produce some copies of the book without its '£3.99' badge, which I duly did, and as a side-effect I ended up with one badge-less copy to sell myself (pictured on the right). Regular readers will know I love an experiment, so I've put it up for auction on eBay, in order to (as I was recently advised by a publishing CEO) 'let the market decide the value'. I look forward to seeing the outcome when bidding finishes on the 21st February.  

I'll close with some more congratulations, as our constant allies The Emma Press have won their first poetry prize - Stephen Sexton's Oils was selected as the Poetry Book Society’s 'Winter Pamphlet Choice'. I'm looking forward to reading it soon, and so should you. (After you've read All of course ... maybe you could read them at the same time?) 

That's all for now, as I'm on the verge of sending our two March titles to the printers, and after that I need to come up with some new superlatives to accurately describe those incredible literary achievements to you in the March newsletter. Wish me luck!

All the best,
Jamie McGarry
(Valley Press Editor)