Summer update from Valley Press

Dear readers,

We've had our fair share of joy and sadness at Valley Press since the last newsletter. I'll attempt to bring you up to date below - starting with our latest book, which needs to be put in some historical context...

When I met Nigel Gerrans in 2009, he had been writing poetry for 70 years, and I had just taken my first tentative steps into publishing - bringing out two books by myself with the words 'Valley Press' on them (to add a hint of professionalism). It was whilst talking to Nigel that I realised publishing other people might be an interesting and rewarding pursuit. Later that year I published his collection Tenebrae, and a couple of weeks ago I was delighted to re-publish those poems, with many others, in a new volume - It Is I Who Speak: Selected Poems.

Edited by the poet's long-time friend and collaborator Felix Hodcroft, this new publication collects the very best of Nigel's work across the decades; including some poems never seen anywhere else before, dug out of the archive and pieced together from various drafts and typescripts. It's been a real labour of love for all involved; a volume which we hope will be read and enjoyed for decades to come. Find out more and read a sample here.

Onto other news now, and there was a flurry of excitement at VP HQ last weekend, when our March novel Grandmother Divided by Monkey Equals Outer Space was recommended by William Boyd as a 'summer read' for 2015 in The Guardian. In case you can't quite make it out from the image, he said the following:

“Nora Chassler’s extraordinary Grandmother Divided by Monkey Equals Outer Space breaks all moulds. Set in 1980s New York, it is a triumphant vindication of the edgy, eccentric demotic as a compelling narrative voice.”

Not bad eh? Thanks to VP poet Mike Di Placido for supplying me with a copy of the paper, running home to get it after encountering me in the Post Office queue - whilst simultaneously purchasing and cooking some garlic bread. (I expect that's how Bloomsbury's press department handled this item too.)

The next thing I should mention is the reading group I organised via the last newsletter, which turned out to be a great idea; very useful indeed. The volunteers seemed to enjoy it - a little too much, even, as they were very nearly locked in Woodend overnight! I'll run another one at the end of the year, and allow a full day for the group to work through the envelopes and make its recommendations. Unless everyone pictured above wants to come back again (there are only five seats!) I'll need some new volunteers, so keep an eye out for that.

So, you may ask, what does this mean re: submissions? As of 6:57pm last night, I have settled the Valley Press publishing schedule for spring 2016 (in pencil - but a thick, black pencil that is hard to rub out). What this means is, if you submitted during our window that ended in June, and I haven't expressly emailed you by now saying you're in, you didn't make it.

I still plan to write to all the submitters individually, but as that's going to take several weeks, I thought a general announcement here would be helpful and not considered too rude. Huge thanks to everyone who sent their work in, it was by far the strongest six months of submissions we've ever received - absolutely top notch. I've been turning down bona fide TV stars, writers of bestsellers, people whose last four books were published by Random House ... it's beyond belief, really.

All of the above made me stop and think what a long way Valley Press has come, since the humblest of origins in 2008; and how it couldn't have happened without all the people who have helped out along the way. My week became a lot more poignant yesterday when I heard that Jenny Drewery - a lynch-pin of the Scarborough cultural scene, and the best proofreader ever to pick up a red pen - had passed away. Jenny worked frequently with Valley Press; if you've read pretty much anything we published between 2012 and 2014 you will have benefited from Jenny's invisible and meticulous work. She was also a wonderfully warm and encouraging personality, and will be much missed. Her friends and family have set up a page here where people can donate in her memory; I'd be delighted if any newsletter readers wanted to contribute.

There are just a couple more things I must mention in this newsletter (ridiculously long as it has already become): you have until 3pm on Wednesday 22nd July to listen to the radio version of Humfrey Coningsby on BBC iPlayer, which you can do here - well worth 45 minutes of anyone's time. Also, for the first time in four years I am doing a 'solo gig', in Covent Garden on Monday 20th July (this Monday!); all details available via The Emma Press. (N.B. I'm also reading at the event listed on Tuesday, and would love it if any VP fans dropped in.)

I think that's everything for now - thanks for reading, as ever, and look out for more news very soon.

All the best,
Jamie McGarry (VP Publisher)

News, books and opportunities from Valley Press

Dear readers,

It's been a couple of months since I was last in touch - how have you been? Right, now the small talk is out of the way, I'll get down to business ... I have a lot to tell you, but I'll start (as ever) with our latest publications.

Both of the books pictured here were released on the 24th April; so I'll introduce them in alphabetical order. First we have Jonathan Davidson's Humfrey Coningsby, a short collection of "poems, complaints, explanations and demands for satisfaction" inspired by the (continuing) life of a 16th century Shropshire Lord.

Twitter has been getting quite excited about Humfrey, with the words "brilliant", "wonderful" and "lovely" being used to describe it in one 24-hour period. Our own Kelley Swain nicely summarised it as: "Sir Harry Flashman meets Sir Geoffrey Hill. Superb, a must-read!" And your Coningsby experience doesn't have to end with the book; Jonathan has also written a radio drama on this subject, currently scheduled for broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 24th June, from 2.15pm. Should be well worth a listen! Check out a sample of the book here to see what the fuss is about.

Then there's Life Class, the second collection by one of our most distinguished VP poets (and noted artist) Jo Reed. Jo designed her own cover for this book, basing it around a portrait of herself by renowned graphic designer Ken Vail, and the interior of the book is just as unique and intriguing. Never trivial, Jo's poetry deals in memory, myth and magic; often combining unvarnished reality with breathtaking flights of imagination. A Scarborough-based event around Life Class is in the works; keep an eye on the book's homepage for news on that, when we have it.

Onto other matters now: near this sentence you should see a picture of the VP/EP stall at the London Book Fair - we had a marvellous time and hope to go back next year. You can read Emma's charming summary of our experience here.
 
I'll be back in London this coming Wednesday (27th), for the official launch of Richard Barnett's Seahouses, which is taking place at Blackwell's Holborn from 6pm. Hope to see you London Valley Press fans there!

I know many newsletter subscribers are anxious to hear about the submissions process, so here we go: our search for great new writing to publish in spring 2016 is about to come to an end. The details are all here, in case you've missed them, and the deadline for us receiving your work is 5pm on Friday May 29th. If you've almost got something together, but can't make that, don't panic! I'll most likely open submissions for autumn 2016 that very same day (with the same requirements), so only rush if you need a decision soon.

I'd actually like to request some help with that decision: I'm looking for fans of literary publishing to meet me in Scarborough one day in June, to read through a selection of submissions and give me some feedback. If you're interested in attending this, reply to this email and let me know; we'll discuss exact dates and times once I have five or six volunteers. If you've submitted something in the last six months, I'm afraid you're not welcome at this meeting - but the rest of you are.

I'd also like a few volunteers to read a forthcoming VP title, due for publication in September - it's prose, non-fiction, on the short side at just 70 pages; I'm looking for general feedback and answers to a few specific questions, which I'll be asking after you've read it. Again, if you're interested in helping out, please reply to this email and let me know. (You won't have to come to Scarborough for this one.)

Finally, I'll end by directing you to a couple of wonderfully detailed and eloquent reviews of our March novel Grandmother Divided by Monkey Equals Outer Space; one from 'Scots Whay Hae' and one by R J Askew. I also loved this short blog about the book by our sales agency's director Sheila Bounford. And very finally (sorry for going on so long!), thanks to Jim Hinks, a remastered version of Dame Judi Dench reading Sue Wilsea's short story 'Paper Flowers' is now online here. Would be a great way to spend 20 minutes of your bank holiday! (In addition to all the minutes you've spent on this newsletter...)

All the best, and thanks for reading,
Jamie McGarry (VP Publisher)

Valley Press Friday Digest, #8

After last week's excitement, a more standard and humble post for you today. If you want to properly get your 'weekly blog feature' fix, check out the first installment of Emma's 'Poem Club'; but if you must hear from me, read on...

• The Bridlington Poetry Festival, which I have been warbling on about for the last two weeks, has now come and gone - it was really excellent, of course, and all the readers (especially those affiliated with VP) did a wonderful job. I have singularly failed to get a decent photo of any of the events - I will post my best effort below, a shot of John Wedgwood Clarke reading from Ghost Pot. Fortunately there was a proper photographer there too, so some good snaps may emerge of the other readers in time.

 

 

• Last time I discussed the festival, I mentioned how one of my Wendy Cope books had already been signed by her, twenty-eight years ago, possibly precluding further personalisation - but as it turned out, she was happy to write something for me in 2014 as well. Here's the result of that:

 

• We're nearly done already, but I do have two interesting links for you - first, an in-depth interview with the above-pictured Mr. Clarke about his new pamphlet In Between. It's fascinating stuff, though they have slyly avoided mentioning or linking to the book! Fortunately you won't find me making that mistake. Then, I was delighted to find Opera di Cera listed on the Poetry Society's 'What to read this summer' list - follow that link for a great little review by long-time VP friend Ian Stuart, who calls OdC 'a sort of Milk Wood from hell', one of the best and pithiest descriptions of the book so far.  See you next week for more news.

Valley Press Friday Digest, #6

After two quiet weeks, we come to my recap for the first week of June - which has been a lot livelier, as you'll see below...

• In Between arrived this week, and is looking good! See below for a tweet from the York Curiouser festival announcing the arrival of their copy. I'll post out VP website pre-orders next week, in time for the official release date next Friday.

@jwedgwoodclarke 'In Between' has arrived #poems about snickets in #York published by @valleypress pic.twitter.com/OmTjwO4ESX
— Hazel C & Lara G (@YorkCuriouser) June 5, 2014

• Other tweets from the York Curiouser team that you may be interested in: a competition, which is still open at time of writing, and a picture of one of the poems from the book literally installed in a snicket - very cool.

So we're nearing 500 followers so 500th deserves a free copy of @jwedgwoodclarke new #york poems about snickets please RT
— Hazel C & Lara G (@YorkCuriouser) June 5, 2014

Starting to install #poems on #York by @jwedgwoodclarke pic.twitter.com/krlP00fOfF
— Hazel C & Lara G (@YorkCuriouser) June 6, 2014

• On a tangentially-related note, the marvellous Bridlington Poetry Festival (established, of course, by Mr. Wedgwood Clarke in 2010) is coming around again, starting on June 12th. The dream team presently running things, Antony Dunn and Dorcas Taylor, have put together an epic programme (perfect, in fact), which features Andrew Motion, Wendy Cope, "our own" Don Paterson, four VP authors, and a football-team's worth of other much-loved poets. This, for me, is the mid-year Christmas... I'm gutted that I can't make it to the weeknight stuff (due to transport issues), but you never know what might turn up!

• A huge milestone for Valley Press this week, as I achieved my long-held dream of having a permanent presence in Scarborough Library. As this appears to be the week I embed tweets, see below for my announcement of the new stand, with photo. (Confession: I'm going back in tomorrow to add a little sign saying 'for sale', to make it clear that these are not actually library books - though many of them can be borrowed elsewhere in the library.)

Delighted to report that a selection of Valley Press books are now on sale at Scarborough library - see pic. pic.twitter.com/2M9Jn2o8EO
— Valley Press (@valleypress) June 2, 2014

• Last week I was hopeful that a review, and some photos, would emerge of Eskimo Snow's Edible Book launch - and the folks at Novelicious have not let me down. You can read their eloquent thoughts on the event here.

• This week in links: I found this great little article from the designer of the Sixty Watt Las Vegas cover, talking about the process behind it. I enjoyed this joke, this exchange of tweets between Cara Brennan and a happy customer, and reading about the amazing new Foyles bookshop. I accidentally asked for, and thus received, this illustration of a topless man (will explain another time!) And I can't let this week go past without linking to Jeremy Paxman's call for an inquisition of poets, George Szirtes' awesome comeback, and Todd Swift's ongoing raging against this injustice (start five posts down and work up, if you're reading today).

• Next week on the Friday Digest: To avoid having an enormous post after two short ones, I'm saving the most interesting thing that happened this week ... how I was faced with the most difficult decision of 2014 so far, and then how I managed to get out of making it ... for discussion in next week's blog. Intriguing huh?

Valley Press Friday Digest, #1

The management of this blog have been talking, and we've decided to attempt a bi-weekly schedule of posts for the foreseeable future. The thinking is that the posts will be 'updates on our projects, reviews of poetry books, little interviews with authors and other publishers, write-ups of events, and reflections on publishing.' So if any of that sounds good, you'll want to come here more often!

To this end, I'm going to post a short(ish) blog every Friday letting the world know what's been happening at Valley Press over the last five days; a helpful digest for people who don't follow every single tweet I post (so, for people). This will take a certain amount of discipline, not something I've previously been known for, but I like a challenge - lets see how far I can get. Emma has warned me that nobody reads anything on the internet on Friday, but that's probably for the best while I figure out the finer points of this new undertaking.

This has been quite an eventful week, so without further ado, here is the first Friday Digest:

• Our latest book has arrived, and is pictured below. The arrival of a finished book is almost enough of a high that I can live on that alone, especially when it coincides with the author writing to me saying I'd made her childhood dream come true (I'm sure Sarah won't mind me sharing that!) In some ways, it feels even more of an achievement when the book in question is a novel; novels are such big blocky things, and take so many hours of effort to produce (easily twice as much as a poetry book), that when the job gets done I feel I've really accomplished something epic. Please hum the opening music from 2001: A Space Odyssey as you gaze on this monument to human achievement:

• In celebration of the paperback book arriving, I also produced a Kindle edition. I put in just a little more effort than usual to include drop-caps and similar niceties, yet for some reason they only appear on your Kindle device, or on the PC software, not on the 'look inside' web preview. If any techy types are passing by - why is that?

• Talking of web previews, the publication of Love and Eskimo Snow inspired me to use 'issuu', for the first time, to show website visitors exactly what reading the book would be like (click through and scroll down to see what I'm talking about). As of yet I've had no feedback on this feature, good or bad - do we like it? Should I do more in future? 

• Because you'll never see them otherwise, here are the first and second cover designs I produced for the book, dating from November and March. I think good taste triumphed in the end, don't you?

 

 

• Besides the arrival of the new book, the big news was that - as of 11am yesterday - Valley Press is once again open to unsolicited submissions. The only catch is that you have to buy a book through the VP website before you can send anything in. I'm looking forward to seeing how the world responds to this! I've been trying to solve the problem of submissions ever since I started; I feel they are an important part of a publisher's job, but with a ratio so far of (approximately) 1000 enquiries to (exactly) 7 books found through this avenue, I was spending an awfully high number of my working hours on a part of the business that doesn't make money. Now, that won't be the case.

• I have to dutifully credit Emma for coming up with this idea, though she has gone about it in an altogether more generous, classy and professional way - 'The Emma Press Club', which you can read about here. My wording on the VP contact page is pretty much 'buy something, then we'll talk'; but at least there should be no confusion, right...?

• Before I could re-open submissions, I felt it was my solemn duty to catch up with all the unread ones that have amassed over the last few years (I found one dating back to November 2012 - sorry to that person!) Having worked through both my folder on the computer, and my 'bag for life' full of paper, I believe myself to be completely up to date in this regard; but if you know differently, and think I've missed you, please get in touch.

• I spent the whole of Tuesday at an intense 'Social Media Masterclass' put on by Superfast North Yorkshire; I felt totally drained at the end, but I did take about ten pages of notes, which I will dig out in a week or two when I've fully recovered. I was sat next to a very smart freelance marketer named Jane Harper, who suggested this Facebook thread which ended up being extremely popular and interesting.

• Miscellany: I also found time this week to work on my new website design, which may or may not arrive in July. Aesthetically, there won't be a big difference to the current one, but it should be easier to buy the books (which is important), and it'll be really easy to use if you're browsing on a mobile phone or small tablet. Finally, I entered the eligible 2013 books into the 2015 Read Regional scheme, and bought 400 jiffy bags (which costs £50, if you're wondering). I think that's everything.

• Web links of the week: This week we were all excited by the detailed review of Pocket Horizon in The Lancet, and I also really enjoyed this interview between Jonny Aldridge (who I've previously declared to by my favourite reviewer) and Mike Di Placido. 'Don't give up until you're five years dead,' Mike declares.

• Further reading: I must admit the only publishing blog I really read, religiously, is Charles Boyle's, and I enjoyed this post this month (for obvious reasons). I especially like the bit where he thinks perhaps CB Editions has been successful because it received zero funding, which is a beautifully empowering thought. (By the way, I think I might have got the 'bullet point' format subconsciously from him.) I'm sure there are other great publishing blogs I could be reading - if you know of one, why not let me know? Emma also pointed me in the way of this post by Fiona Moore, which is a great insight into a typical pamphlet publishing process from a poet's perspective (Emma recommended this post through a haze of jealousy over how well it was written - which is usually a good indicator of quality).

• Oh, and in case you were wondering after bullet point five, the VP books that have been found through an unsolicited submission: Encore, Form, Winston & Me, A Family Behind Glass, Zachariah: The Boer Diamond, An Anniversary of Flight, Love and Eskimo Snow.

Mike Di Placido reviewed by Jonny Aldridge

JM: I don't normally post reviews, but this is a great piece, not currently available on any website - but soon to be published in Myths of the Near Future magazine. Mr. Aldridge is fast becoming one of my favourite reviewers - check out his ingeniously-formatted thoughts on Miles Salter's Animals here.

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"A master of tone": Mike Di Placido's A Sixty-Watt Las Vegas

In short: this is a very very good book of poems by Mike Di Placido. Having moved on from his professional footballing days in debut pamphlet Theatre of Dreams (Smith/Doorstop, 2009), he has returned with witty, funny and bold poetry from a Yorkshire "househusband". That explains the poem about a hoover, then.

These 30 poems are an idiosyncratic bunch: three are vignettes of animals, four are imagined meetings with T.S. (Eliot), Ted (Hughes), Simon (Armitage?) and Dickens, and seven are set in Scarborough with musings on Britishness, history and suicide. All are first-person narrated, a lot with "you" present too. And they are mostly very personal and very engaging.

Di Placido's at his best when he is writing—we presume—autobiographically. We meet the dad, the wife, the godson, the first employer 'Albert', and we find out "whatever happened to uncles". The writing probes at nostalgia—embracing it, but cynically—as when the narrator reminisces on his first job as a porter’s assistant at "The Norbreck Hotel, Scarborough, 1968". "Then we lost touch. As you do", he writes:

"Until today that is, when, walking down

memory lane past the hotel, I see you staring

owl-like through a window,

waiting for the coaches to arrive."

There is a clever play going on here, with the "lane past the hotel" pun and the simple diction only hinting at the importance of "memory" in preserving our idols, in this case preserving them almost in "cryogenic suspension" ('Uncles'). We would be privileged to get more of this from Di Placido, and I would happily read an autobiography of his whole life in poetry if it came in at this standard.

Di Placido is a master of tone: he plays the literary muser, the true romantic, the social commentator and the stand-up comic all in one. I think he knows this, and is very sly in using it to his advantage. In 'Heron' we expect a comic skit on this "ridiculous" bird, "this gangling oddball", and then he ends with this magnificent stanza:

"But not that skewer of a beak

you imagine a fish seeing

through the shattering glass,

the whirl of water."

That "shattering glass" is the best poetic phrase I've seen in a long time. And if you read it with Di Placido's Yorkshire rasp, the dropped vowels make it all the more impressive. (Here he is reading 'Hare'.) This is not the only instance where Di Placido approaches the issue of underestimation. The witty opener to 'Alfie's Magic Wand' doubles as a "serious" statement on the topic of audience and reception: "He started to cry when he first saw me, / which I took as a positive sign – / nice to be taken seriously."

Having said this, let's not write him off as a defendant for the underdog. Within Di Placido's colloquial style these poems are esoteric, ultra-specific and intellectually acute. Because of this, you get insight into Di Placido's inspirations and motivations. Most poems are anchored by a real detail, a time, a place, which he has remembered and wanted to sanctify in poetry. I love that 'To R. S. Thomas' begins with a sentence-long quotation on poetry and God from a daily newspaper—"R.S. Thomas (The Independent, Saturday 27th February 1993)". And twenty years later Mike has published a poem about it! Another poem cites an article from "Scarborough Evening News, 13th March 1991", but then others are inspired by Christopher Smart’s 18th-century religious poem ‘Jubilate Agno’ or Robert Lowell’s ‘Memories of West Street and Lepke’. Di Placido takes inspiration from wherever and whenever—which isn't to say everywhere and anytime—and he re-imagines events in his own inimitable style.

The weakness? A couple of poems seem to jar with the rest of the collection, something which could be easily avoided by more rigorous editing. These are times when Di Placido tries for an elevated and urgent tone, and it falls flat. In 'Recovery' especially, where "you’ve pieced back / together your heart, / re-inserted those eyes", or 'The Assassin' (death) who "does answer us / when we interrogate the arid silence / [...] silence is his answer". The poet obviously felt the need to make this collection more dynamic but, seeing as this kind of drama doesn't come easy to him, he should have more trust in his own voice.

Of course, a true test for any work is how much it fails to meet the publisher's description. In this case, Valley Press says that the poems "demonstrate wit, wisdom, and Di Placido’s continuing ability to reveal the extraordinary from the ordinary." It's a credit to Mike's work that this is pretty much true. And at 27p per poem, this collection is well worth it. Go. Buy.

A Sixty-Watt Las Vegas by Mike Di Placido is published by Valley Press at £7.99