This week at Valley Press, #81: 'Steve & Nora'

Dear readers,

Once again I find myself with more jobs than time on a Friday, so a late newsletter is the result. Fortunately I have an ace up my sleeve in the form of an intriguing interview, conducted early in October, between VP authors Nora Chassler and Steve Rudd. Enjoy!

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SR: Hi Nora! How are things, and how has 2017 treated you so far?

NC: Hi Steve, I’m fine. Am I? I think I am. This season is always interesting. I like Fall, but I find it a little scary. 2017 has been very good, career-wise, and personally as well. And my mind is clearer. No, it isn’t; but I am learning to embrace, accept and work with its lack of clarity.

For those not in the know, you’re the author of three acclaimed books, two of which have been published by Valley Press. What led to your work being picked up by Jamie at VP?

I approached Jamie because my agent at the time, Andrew Kidd, couldn’t place G/M=OS. I was incredibly disheartened at the time. I was taking a course to get a certificate in counselling children and young adults. I was throwing in the towel. So, when Jamie accepted it, I was ecstatic, vindicated; I believed! I was fished up, rescued, redeemed!

Even though I don’t really drink (anymore), my daughter got me a bottle of Prosecco and a Victoria Sponge. We had a little party. I now accept that I will always write, and that there will be painful moments when the readers aren’t there. I am incredibly grateful just now to have a few. That allows me to persist with slightly less sorrow.

This in no way means that I think all writers need to be as insecure, pessimistic and as generally needy as I am, but for those who are; you aren’t alone!

How would you best describe your style of writing, and which authors have had the most influence on such a style?

My style is the result of where I am from, what I have read and admired, and what I believe about art and reality. William Boyd called it demotic, which I originally misread as demonic – I rather liked that. Demotic is good, too, of course. Seriously though, hmmm... describe my own style? That’s a tough one. I’m very keen on getting to the bottom of things, and calling the reader’s attention to whatever assumptions they are bringing to the text. They often precisely don’t want their attention drawn to anything about themselves – they are reading to escape – so I employ all manner of tricks: I try to charm, disarm, dazzle, distract, then I get very close to their ear and tell them something they might rather not hear. Why not just tell them outright? Because it’s through the narrative, the characters, the whole shebang, that I attempt to set up a conceptual/emotional world that will change the reader for the better. It’s a moral project. It sounds a little patronising, perhaps, but that’s the truth; and I myself have learned many things from books. Wow, that’s quotable – sounds almost like something that wretch in the White House would say. Though I think the construction “I myself’ is a little advanced for him.

Authors who have influenced me in the last week include Jean Rhys, Heraclitus, Malcolm X, W.B Yeats, Dostoevsky, Julia Kristeva, Freud and Buddha.

You recently interviewed Paul Auster in Edinburgh. (Note from JM: watch here if you missed it.) He is my favourite author, and I have read every one of his books bar his latest. Are you a personal fan of his, and how on earth did you manage to bag the “gig” of interviewing him?

I’m not really a 'fan' of anyone. I am a fan of great books, not people. I’ve known too many great artists.

I love great books; in my life great books have done me far more good than people. Sounds harsh, but I’m too old to mince words. (That’s except for my daughter, Frances, who has done me more good than all the books I’ve loved added up.)

I think The Invention of Solitude, Moon Palace, The NY Trilogy and The Music of Chance are works of literary genius up there with the House of the Seven Gables and Bartleby the Scrivener (Auster loves Hawthorne and Melville, as do I).

When I spoke to him, much mention was made of Beckett, but I had only read Waiting for Godot – which was a little embarrassing. I read a bit of Molloy in a bookshop the other day and was immediately struck by how strong an influence Beckett had been on Auster. I didn’t buy it but I should have. I’ll get it online. It looked great.

I got the “gig” because Nick Barley saw me do a reading from Miss Thing in 2010, and I guess he thought I fielded the Q&A well. I had never interviewed an author before and was super-nervous, but didn’t feel and, to be honest, didn’t want to say “no”, even though I was really scared. I actually said to Nick, “I won’t let you down, Sir!” It went well though. Phew.

Like Paul, you have a kinship with New York, both of you having lived and set your stories there. What would you say are the best and worst things about living in such a huge city of NYC’s caliber?

Place is hugely important in my writing, and in my life. NYC is, as you imply, incomparable. Even now, stuffed with rich bankers, its spirit still breathes under the asphalt. And that is not nostalgia or romanticism. NYC has an intense and fucked-up history in terms of humans, and it’s ongoing. Horrible things happened when the Europeans arrived, and the guilt and bad blood still seethes out of the river and the leaves. I always felt like it was a stolen place.

I spent a lot of time in the parks in NYC growing up, to get out of the tiny, oppressive apartment I grew up in, and there is something so alive about it, geographically. The rocks in the park, the sky, the rivers, are all strong and impolite. (As opposed to the weather in the UK, which sometimes seems passive-aggressive.) Although it’s been through hell, the earth over there is not beaten; it will remind you continually how much bigger than you it is. I like that. The seasons are actually seasons. I miss the weather and the parks.

The best thing about NYC that we can all access without my hippy-vision goggles is being alone in a crowd, I’d say, and not being judged. It took me a while to adjust to the homogeneity of the UK. At first I disliked it, but truth be told, I’ve settled in. I feel safer here. That said, yeah, in New York, you can walk down the street in a chicken suit wearing a placard that says “Go F**k Yourself”, and no one cares. Here, if you don’t have a TV, or your kid isn’t allowed to watch it, or if you don’t iron your shirts, people treat you differently. There are a lot of British protocols that I could do without (all this polite stepping aside when the person on the pavement with you has more than enough room), but the irony is that I find it easier to communicate here. In America, everything is always up for grabs; every conversation is only about that conversation, and the rules are established as you go. It’s every man for himself. Here, you can relax a little. I think this has to do with the welfare state (what’s left of it).

What else? I miss all the windows, and looking into them, feeling envy for all the different lives. I wanted to know everyone in NY. Impossible. NY is impossible. Or it was for me. But I love it. Paul (if I may be so bold) had a very different experience; he grew up in suburban NJ. I think that may be why he stayed. Not that he is an incomer, but he made his move. I was from there, and it was time to go.

In interviews you have stated that you have no desire to return to live in New York. Do you mean “never”, or “for the time being”? I take it that you are properly rooted in Scotland?

I seem to have been approaching that question at the end of the last. No, never. I want to leave Scotland at some point and move somewhere sunny and with better food. Not that I don’t like a good mince round (know that joke about the butcher?), because I genuinely appreciate the wonderful tan foods of my adopted homeland (pies, fish and chips) and the foods that glow, but I’m cracking on and I want to be warmer. I want to be an auld dear with tanned bare legs walking beside the sea.

What memories do you have of growing up in America in the seventies and eighties?

Lots. Can you be more specific?! Kidding. I read recently that amnesia before the age of 6 is very common; I don’t have that at all. Unfortunately for my mother, I remember everything! Let me pull one from my hat…

In the early seventies, all the mental health patients were let out of mental hospitals because NYC was bankrupt. The streets of the Upper West Side of my childhood were populated by many screaming people. They had names: the Scissor Lady, the Chicken Man. I walked everywhere alone from a very young age – 6/7. I had to always have my wits about me as people would chase you and scream. It didn’t help that I was blonde, which was uncommon, and so attracted a lot of attention. To this day I am very jumpy and always sizing people up; it’s a big waste of energy, but it makes me pretty observant. With any luck it adds to my writing.

You wound up in Scotland, in St. Andrews to be precise, owing to a Creative Writing course you wanted to take on. What was the course like, and would you say that you immediately fell in love with St. Andrews?

No! I remember thinking, “this is an outpost”. I grew up looking across the Hudson at NJ, and looking over at Carnoustie was a little different. It seemed so empty and grey. Beautiful, and very bleak. It was a bit of a shock.

Also, in those days (2002), St. Andrews was not as posh as it is now. Nowhere near. It was, of course, pretty fancy, what with the golf, but now it’s nuts. The toffs there are just unbearable, especially if you’re not in a good mood, which, though this interview may make it sound otherwise, I usually am. Anyway, it wasn’t a case of love at first sight at all! I almost didn’t even take the course. My daughter was not yet two, and I thought maybe I should stay closer to my (now ex) husband’s family near Brighton. I also thought: a degree in Creative Writing, what the hell? I almost did a Masters in Modernism at York. But I spoke to Douglas Dunn on the phone and he convinced me. I would not say I regret doing the course, but I didn’t learn how to write on it. I learned how to trust my own opinions of my own work in the face of misreading, perhaps.

As well as writing novels, you write poetry. Which comes easiest to you? Prose or poetry?

Poetry comes more easily. At best, that’s a neutral sign; at worst, a bad one. A friend of mine said that “form is a construct” the other day, which is obviously true, once you think about it. I was fretting about whether I could “be a poet”. I wrote poetry before fiction; I stopped in my early thirties because I was discouraged by people (poets) whose opinions I valued, who felt I should stick to fiction. I have written a poem that’s 80 pages long, an epic, but I still haven’t shown anyone. (I read Julia Kristeva’s definition of “epic” yesterday and I liked it.) My relationship to the novel and the narrative structure is fraught, ambivalent, complex; I feel less animosity towards poetry.

I think after all the trouble I’ve had getting novels I worked so hard on (they take 6 years at least) published, I’m allowing myself to try different things with the old “written word”. I guess now that I’ve accepted I will never stop writing, I feel a bit freer to try different forms. I’ve written a play as well, about a survivor of Jimmy Savile’s abuse. In it, the character is writing a panto about her history, so there is some singing and dancing. Anyway, wish me luck with this stuff – I’ll need it!

Your novel Grandmother Divided by Monkey Equals Outer Space certainly possesses the most audacious title I’ve come across in recent years. Were there any other prospective titles in the running for such a book? What made you ultimately settle on the one that you did?

I thought of The Sex Lives of Children. In earlier drafts there was more blatant sexual abuse, but I took it out; I wanted to create an amnesiac, “lacunae” effect that implicated the reader in the suppression. Not sure I succeeded.

I settled on the title because… I’m not sure. Titles are hard. Some people have told me they hate it, others that they love it. It’s a line from a Ted Berrigan poem.

Looking ahead, are we likely to see any more Nora Chassler novels hitting bookshop shelves in the near future?

Hitting? No. Sneaking up to and hiding near Bruce Chatwin and Tracy Chevalier, possibly... in a few years. I have an unfinished novel called The Geographic. The omniscient narrator and the protagonist are with me every day, trying to get me to restart it, but every time I do, my heart breaks and I go nuts. It takes place in NYC and Dundee. I find writing it really hard. There are two intertwined – or “conjoined” as my daughter used to say with inappropriate frequency as a child – stories: one follows the character, who is a child model in the 80s, and the other is the omniscient narrator telling their own story. The omniscient narrator struggles with contradictory information, directions and rules, and slowly loses their powers. The character doesn’t have it too great in the end either.

Finally, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your writing? 

They can email me. I’m pretty much an open book. And the parts that aren’t open, they can find in my books.

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Hope you found that as interesting as I did. Nora's books Grandmother Divided by Monkey Equals Outer Space and Madame Bildungsroman's Optimistic Worldview are available now, and remember newsletter readers get 10% off VP books for life! See you next week.

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher
                       

This week at Valley Press, #44: 'Putting in the hours'

Dear readers,

A lot of small steps forward this week – but maybe that's the best way to get somewhere? I remember, from a little book of Chinese philosophy: 'the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step'. (Valley Press will embark on its own Chinese journey this year; but that's a subject for another newsletter.)

I'm also reminded of the '10,000 hours' theory, which was all the rage when I registered as self-employed, back in January 2011. Gladwell wrote that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice would make you a world-class expert in any skill, so I did a calculation of how long I would need to stick with my new career in publishing before I had it all sussed out. If I worked to a standard full-time schedule, I could have it wrapped up by March 2017...

Sadly, the theory has now been mostly disproved, even without my own example (which may be the final nail in the coffin). I logged into some new software this week, designed to streamline data at a publishing house, and found 98% of the services it offered were a complete mystery to me. So I'm still not a world-class expert – maybe in another 10,000? – but you could argue that the Valley Press that exists today was built from those hours, one hour at a time. Or, to borrow another bit of philosophy, Grimm interpreted by Steven Moffat: 'that's a hell of a bird'.

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So what were this week's 'small steps'? One of them was registering the company 'Valley Press Ltd.', which is the beginning of a new chapter for us (and a ton of admin); though it won't make much difference to the day-to-day running of things. Another was sending out page proofs for our Yorkshire Anthology to the contributors – I hope you all enjoyed having a sneak preview! I was stunned to see that within 24 hours, 43 of the 66 contributors had already got back to me with feedback; who says poets aren't organised?

Elsewhere, myself and the 'digital reading team' made it through a few more manuscripts submitted in 2016. I've found this process so helpful, it's the best idea I've had in months; the volunteers have been phenomenal, tackling each manuscript faster and with more insight than I could possibly have imagined. Next time we take submissions (which I'm hoping will be in April), I'm going to formalise this pseudo-committee and arrange some sort of reward for them. They deserve it!

What else? I took on another new team member; Martha Sprackland, formerly of Cake magazine and Faber & Faber, will be editing a series of poetry manuscripts for us in the coming months – you'll see the first fruits of her labour in September. I also quietly changed our 'FAQ' section to indicate we are now considering applications for internships, for the first time since 2013. People must have been watching that like a hawk, I've already had ten CVs! (It's tough to get publishing experience in this part of the world; I always wanted to offer regular internships, but haven't had the time or facilities in recent years.)

On top of all this, I did an interview for the excellent blog 'Book and Brew', which you can read here. As usual, it's pretty frank stuff; I always end up saying far more than I intend to when I do interviews. I think possibly I confuse it for therapy...? Anyway, enjoy that, if you fancy a bit more of my waffle this week; otherwise, see you next Sunday.

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher

Catch-up with Valley Press: Jamie McGarry interviewed by Greg Freeman

This interview originally appeared here, on the poetry hub 'Write Out Loud', and was conducted on the 9th March 2014.  Questions were asked by Greg Freeman, answers given by Valley Press editor Jamie McGarry.

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You’ve recently completed a “national tour”, to celebrate, among other things, your five-year anniversary. How did the tour go, and how did Valley Press start?

The tour went well - I'd always envisioned a tour before Christmas on the five-year anniversary, and it was tremendously invigorating to see it come to fruition, and to be living out of a suitcase, travelling round the country celebrating the books I'd published.  I usually lead a rather quiet, uneventful life, so this for me was literally the most excitement I'd had in years... I think the authors and attendees had fun too.  In terms of enjoyment it was a success, and I also made a bit of money out of it, so no complaints.

Jamie looking suitably prosperous, 'on tour' November 2013.

I had also planned to release a celebratory anthology at the five-year anniversary, featuring an extract from each VP book and details of the origins and development of the press.  In the end, it wasn't possible, but I still hope to do it later this year - I may re-write history and say Valley Press began with the first publication of someone other than myself, in October 2009, thus keeping the whole 'five years, fifty books' thing going (which was the title of the tour).

The story from 2008 was that, after failing a Primary Teaching course, I decided to throw myself into literature as a possible alternative career.  I'd been pursuing teaching simply because it seemed like a sensible route to take, but with that door now closed, I was suddenly free to experiment... and with a novel and enough poems for a book sitting on my hard drive, I decided to leap straight into self-publication, without even trying other routes.  It wasn't about the fame and fortune at that point, it was more about the process: I published the first two VP books just to see if I could bring a book into existence.  I think there were only 40 copies of each produced, most of which I gave away, but it was enough to get a taste for what publishing would be like.

By 2010 I had published ten books, and got myself a degree in English Lit, so the future would have been back on course - except, eight months after graduation I was unable to find any employment, so I had almost no choice but to try running Valley Press full-time from January 2011.  And things have worked out surprisingly well!  I suppose the moral of all this is, every failure is an opportunity - just keep plodding forwards, and keep bumping into walls until you find a door.

You also publish fiction and non-fiction. How big a part does poetry play in your output?  How do you regard the prospects for poetry publishing and sales of poetry?

Valley Press is mostly about the poetry, truth be told.  The ratio of poetry to non-poetry reflects my own interests as a reader, therefore around three-quarters of the output has been, and will always be, poetry.

Your visitors will be pleased to hear I think the prospects are extremely good for poetry publishing.  Maybe it's just the way my operation is skewed, but VP poetry titles have always performed as well as - if not better than - the fiction and non-fiction titles.  When marketing, and direct selling at events, I've found readers are readers and are interested in the topic, content and appearance of a book primarily, not worrying too much if it's in verse or not.  I may be wearing large blinkers, but I can only see engagement with poetry growing in the future.  Each identifiable niche of the media seems to have an increasingly audible voice, and with people's attention spans allegedly shrinking, poetry could go truly 'mainstream' (the way erotic fiction has) at any moment.  I'm waiting...

In 2013 came the intriguing news that Valley Press and another small press publisher, The Emma Press – known in particular for its Mildly Erotic anthology – had become “engaged” with a view to marriage. Can you explain this a bit more?

I heard about the Emma Press when Emma published her first book... there was just something about that book, and the press, and its owner, that captured and held my attention like nothing I'd ever seen before.  As me and Emma began communicating, in a series of lengthy emails, I realised our values were pretty much exactly aligned.  Not only did I believe the Emma Press was destined for great things, I wanted to do all I could to help it get there; so we began sharing information and resources in an admirably selfless manner, as well as selling each other's books at markets and events.

The 'engagement' was our idea for formalising this arrangement, in the amusing, romantic and wholesome style preferred by Emma and myself.  Our first act post-engagement was to start a joint blog - see here for the first post, announcing our intentions.  This connection is probably the best thing that ever happened to Valley Press, and I'm keen to keep it going (and growing) in the years to come... though we haven't set a date yet for the 'wedding', which would perhaps come with a shared anthology.  To add a pleasant extra note of complication, I myself am engaged and planning a wedding at the moment, so the key question is: will l beat Valley Press to the altar...?

What has been your most satisfying moment in poetry publishing so far?

The moments I remember the most are the book launches; where it's a book by a person I really admire and respect, we've spent months editing/designing it and got it exactly right, and where dozens and dozens of people horde in and buy big handfuls of copies each.  There was the palace visit as well (see below), but nothing can compare to nights that fit the description above - and I have been lucky enough to have quite a few of those.

Your website mentions the weighty number of submissions you receive each year.  How should a poet who wishes to be published approach you?  Are there any dos and don’ts?

I am constantly grappling with submissions, and it is not an understatement to say I change my policy on them every month - which can be quite frustrating for submitters, I imagine.  A look at the statistics should deter people even further: since I started seeking subs in 2011, I have received more than a thousand unsolicited submissions and published just six of them (with the other titles coming into existence more organically).  All of those six broke through on quality alone; in a couple of cases, they were the best examples of a genre I was keen to try, but it was still quality that got them through.  So the only 'do' for submitters is, write an amazing book - one that happens to sync up exactly with my own tastes.  On you go!

One thing I plan to do (and Emma has already started, I think) is to only accept submissions from people who have purchased a book through the Valley Press website in the past few months - this may be a slightly controversial approach, but it's started to make a lot of sense.  Before I can re-open submissions with that new rule though, I need to work through a big bag of unread manuscripts that has been ignored since September... watch this space!

Your website says you’ve designed nearly all the Valley Press book covers. Again, are there any rules you think should be followed, in creating the look of a book?

The most important rule of cover design is to not give up until it's perfect, or at least at a truly professional standard.  When creating a cover, you should look at it and think: 'would (major publishing house) publish a book with this cover..?'  You have to be brutally honest with yourself, and if the answer is 'no', keep working.

I'm ashamed to say I haven't always followed that bit of advice, for a variety of reasons, but I have done okay (for someone with no design training) and plan to continually improve this aspect of the business in future.  My approach now is to realise my limitations as a designer, and concentrate on getting the most interesting, eye-catching, high-quality photographs for the covers - then adding simple text that doesn't detract or draw attention from the photo.  I can see this becoming a sort of 'house style' in future, though I would never go with the conformist, 'series' covers that a lot of poetry publishers employ (not that there's anything wrong with those).  The great thing about the 'photo/simple text' approach is it doesn't require a great deal of technical skill; just a bit of positioning and good taste.

Readers can see all the VP covers on this page, if they are curious.  I should also mention, in the interests of having a holiday this year, I do hire out my cover design skills for extraordinarily reasonable rates - contact me through the website if you need one doing.

You have your own book of poems, The Dead Snail Diaries. Does publishing get in the way of your creative output at all?

It definitely does, and the truth is I haven't been able to write a single poem since I started full-time publishing back in January 2011.  It was literally off like a switch - until then I used to write at least one a week, after that, not a thing.  If any psychologists are reading this... what happened there?  Answers on a postcard!

Fortunately, by that point I had written enough poems about snails to create a themed collection, and though the VP edition is now out of print, I'm pleased to report the Emma Press will be re-releasing The Dead Snail Diaries (with new illustrations by Emma) later this year.  It will be extremely bizarre to be on the other end of the publishing process for a change, and to be promoting myself and my writing again after a three-year break, but I'm looking forward to it.

Finally, how did you enjoy the recent poetry reception at Buckingham Palace? What was it like to meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh?

It was a wonderful experience, a real once-in-a-lifetime thing, to walk through the halls and see the not-too-rebellious cream of British poetry there in their best suits and frocks (and queuing to get their coats back at the end... very strange to see the likes of Armitage and McGough in that context).  It was a night where I'd pass someone, look at their namebadge, and double-take on realising who this was, remembering all the incredible poems I'd read by them over the years.  And it was such a compliment to be invited; it's really the only recognition or reward I've had for my publishing so far, the first hint that what I'm doing might be somehow important - and you can't imagine how chuffed my old mum was when I showed her the invite.

As for the Queen and the Duke, the meeting could best be described as surreal - as they ushered us through the corridors, at one point I looked around and said: 'this is intense!', at which a footman appeared and said, 'this way sir'.  My name was then called out, I stepped round a corner and the Queen was literally there, suddenly, in front of my eyes... I have no memory of what followed, but the official photographs include one of me shaking hands with her and one of me bowing awkwardly, so I know I didn't go too far wrong.  A night to remember, in any case.

Under the Covers, Pre-Wakefield

This weekend sees Valley Press host an afternoon at Wakefield Literature Festival, and in honour of this, writer-in-residence Steve Dearden interviewed me (Jamie McGarry, if we haven't been introduced) for a feature he calls 'Under the Covers'; asking what book I'm currently reading, and three books which have influenced me as a publisher. Here's what I said:

I am currently reading Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany by Stephen Sondheim - a long title I know, but it seems a shame to trim it down, especially as that's how it's expressed on Amazon.

This is a perfect book to very slowly make your way through over a period of months. Like my usual reading material of poetry (or short non-fiction), the lyrics make brief, impressive reading, matched by the 'attendant' content, which is nothing short of brilliant. Sondheim has been working at the very top of the art world for what must be sixty years, and you don't go through that without picking up some essential wisdom. Everything he says is to be picked apart, savoured and considered, and is relevant to people working in all areas of art, not just musical theatre. I may never finish this book - and I mean that as a compliment. I'll probably just start again at the beginning.

Three books that have influenced me, as a publisher:

Tony Harrison, Collected Poems - this eggshell-blue hardback arrived in 2007, when I was just getting seriously into poetry, realising its power and that it was a medium worth spending your life on. My student finances couldn't stretch to buying the book, so instead I would walk innocently into Waterstones each time I passed, and read a new poem or two from their copy (which I eventually did manage to buy).

Leaving the content aside (for today), the production of this book was a big influence on me. It felt important, monolithic even, like the book could appear in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is due to the paper, the cover, the font, the typesetting - everything. It really is a work of typesetting genius - no poem is stretched or distorted, and they are able to jump from obscure German calligraphy to small caps in the middle of a poem without causing any distress.

In the last few months, I have acquired the font used in this book (Adobe Minion)... and the strange thing is, it appeared on my computer one day without explanation or announcement. I have, however, chosen not to investigate this, and to test it out on John Wedgwood Clarke's new collection, launched the day before our Wakefield Lit Fest event.

Philip Larkin, Collected Poems - the green-covered version with yellow and light-blue text, where the running order of the original collections are preserved, and all those second rate works from the first CP are removed. Small, neat, tidy and beautiful, this is perhaps the most effective Faber poetry cover design from their 'just the name and title' Pentagram series, and was another great influence on me in terms of typesetting and design. Perfectly proportioned in every way, this book's design again manages to make its content seem even more important than it already is (if that's possible).

My Tony Harrison book is signed by the author; unfortunately me and Phil didn't have a crossover period, but I did managed to get this signed by Jean Hartley, whose Marvell Press insignia is all over it - her story is a constant reminder that small-press poetry publishing can make a lasting difference, and (occasionally) does count/matter in the grand scheme of things.

John Glenday, Grain (or, all recent Picador poetry titles) - when Picador were working on, say, the first edition of The World's Wife, they were doing fantastic, flawless work. Then they got better. Grain is an example of a book I bought just because I was overwhelmed by the quality of the design - so perfect is this particular book, with its double-sided colour cover and thick, wonderful paper, it actually never leaves my desk. It's always there, so I can pick it up any time and remind myself what I'm working towards at VP.

P.S. An honorary mention must go to The Flower and the Plough by Rachel Piercey, illustrated by Emma Wright - buying this book led me into a conversation that led to a marriage, and the sheer attention to detail (and beautiful illustrations) within this slim volume are very much responsible for that.

According to anecdotal evidence, I've been studying book design (and copying it on old exercise books) since I was six years old - so you can see how far gone I am down the road to publishing obsession, with no sign of turning back. Luckily for you, the readers, I suppose!


The VP event at Wakefield will take place at The Orangery, 4-6pm on Sunday 29th September, and feature readings from Kate Fox, Adam Strickson, Paul Sutherland, Sue Wilsea, Tony Howson, James Nash, Miles Salter, Helen Burke, Norah Hanson and Mike Di Placido. See you there!