Novi

We’re gearing up for the launch of Jean Kent’s new peripatetic poetry collection Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks at the Toronto Library in Lake Macquarie on Sat 29th September.  Check out the Facebook event for more details if you’d like to join us.  Well known Sydney poet savant Judith Beveridge will be there to crack the metaphorical bottle of bubbly over the metaphorical bows.

In the meantime, take a look at Queensland/Northumberland poet Paul Summers’ take on the book at the Rochford Street Review:

‘This is a book of love and of loss, of empathy & compassion, of celebration and remembrance, of trauma and attempted reparation, of bewilderment & understanding.’

Paul reviewed the illustrated hardback version and so also has some kind comments for artist Oliver Watts and even for Pitt Street Poetry itself.  Thanks Paul.

The Queensland Poetry Festival – held at the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane last weekend – invited Jean Kent to join the raft of national and international poets featured on the festival roster.  Jean read from her new collection Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks on Saturday and again on Sunday.  The books themselves arrived from the printers just in time, and the festival bookstore did a brisk trade in both the hard back and paperback versions.

Each of which, by the way, are now available for purchase on-line from our friendly, easy to use Emporium. 

The bitterly cold, wet and windy Canberra night, we are delighted to report, did not dissuade 63 loyal Foulcher followers from turning out to hear Susan Hampton undertake the home town launch of John Foulcher’s new collection The Sunset Assumption on Thursday 9th August.   Including most if not all of Canberra’s poetry heavyweights.  Watch our Facebook pages for the photographic evidence.

The Pitt Street push headed south for winter last Thursday for the launch of our first book-length collection of new poetry – John Foulcher’s The Sunset Assumption.

Around 40 people convened at the local sacred site – aka Kris Hemensley’s Collected Works bookshop in Swanston Street – to hear Robyn Rowland undertake the panegyric – and a fine old job she made of it too.

If you missed it, well the photos over on our Facebook page capture the mood quite nicely, and there’s absolutely nothing to stop you buying a copy of the book on line right here at our Emporium.

And it’s certainly not too late to join us for the Canberra launch by Susan Hampton.

Paperchain Bookshop Manuka
6-8pm Thursday August 9th

Just back a week or so from the contemporary equivalent of the nineteenth century Grand Tour.  A conference, a spot of business, a day or two of holidays, and of course some modest spruiking for the new poetry imprint.

First stop was Paris, where we had hoped The Red Wheelbarrow would stock our books.  But the place is up for sale, the owner is going back home.  Sad, really, for a charming bookshop with a nostalgic metonym of a name.  As it turned out Brian Spence at the Abbey Bookshop in the rue de la Parcheminerie in the 5^th is more than happy to carry our books, so we left him with a complete selection.  This Aladdin’s cave has been an outlet for Anglophone Commonwealth writers on the left bank since 1989; the books spilling out on the street from an impossibly narrow space in an 18^th century townhouse.  Thanks for the coffee, Brian.

On to London and a dodgy art pub called The Three Compasses in Dalston (Arsenal territory) where we met up with young Tim Cumming, who read from his new PSP pamphlet Etruscan Miniatures to an enthusiastic crowd of solid drinkers.  On the menu you could eat absolutely anything you wanted, as long as it was burgers.  Tim is clearly a rising star on the British poetry scene – his latest book The Rapture published by Salt is making satisfactory waves.  Our little pamphlet is a shimmering snapshot of a summer holiday in Italy, self-illustrated with six understated watercolours – the felicitous product of a chance encounter on Twitter.   Imbibe a lowlight video of his reading over on the Videmus page.

On our last day in London the two Davids at the Poetry Book Society in High Holborn made us more than welcome on a cold, wet summer’s day.  We met in their conference room, the long table piled high with unpublished manuscripts submitted to be the next PBS recommendations.

Unfathomable that the Arts Council would withdraw funding from this cherished national institution, famously founded by TS Eliot in 1953.  (NB quite a good year that one – DNA discovered by James Watson and the other chap, a second Elizabeth crowned, and the present writer born with the cord around his neck.  Report card: would have done better with more oxygen).

Anyway, these days the Poetry Book Society is the UK’s leading poetry retailer, dispatching a chosen volume quarterly to around 3000 faithful subscribers, and maintaining an on-line bookstore of just about every poetry book in print in English, currently around 90,000 volumes.  In addition to their “choice”  each quarter they also recommend several additional books,  a pamphlet and a volume of translations.  And then there’s the TS Eliot prize, probably the most coveted award in modern poetry, and recently the subject of some spicy political controversy.     Whatever the outcome of that particular debate, it is essential that the PBS survives the UK economic downturn – so get on over there now and buy a subscription.

You will appreciate, then, what a great source of pride it is for us that the PBS has agreed to be the exclusive outlet for Pitt Street Poetry’s offerings in the UK.  We left them with copies of Light Pressure and Etruscan Miniatures and to our surprise and joy that lovely old 1983 classic. John Foulcher’s ‘Loch Ard Gorge’ was their poem of the week just the other day.   We are supremely confident they will survive and flourish, and look forward to a long and happy partnership.

A milestone.   The first book to be published by Pitt Street Poetry is available from today.

Consistent with our plan to publish reprints of classic Australian poetry as well as a selective new list, we are delighted to advise that our initial offering is a reprint of John Foulcher’s first collection Light Pressure, originally published by Angus & Robertson in 1983 at the time Les Murray was the poetry editor at that distinguished Australian firm.

In its day Light Pressure was a national bestseller and reprinted a number of times – as unusual at that time for a poetry book as it is today!  Several of the poems in its pages have been widely anthologised and were used for years as set texts for final year English examinations across the country.  More importantly, they have become a memorable part of the literary landscape for the baby boomer generation.  Despite this, as is so often the case with Australian poetry, the book has been out of print for over 25 years.

Pitt Street Poetry is very pleased to make Light Pressure available once again to a new generation of Australian poetry enthusiasts – in a pocket format and at a very reasonable price.  In keeping with our philosophy of using a mix of traditional and contemporary technologies, it is also available for download as an e-book in both the e-pub and mobi formats, which means it can be read on virtually any popular e-book reader, including the Kindle, the iPad (or iPhone) and the Sony reader.

Light Pressure has been reprinted using the latest print-on-demand techniques.  So as long as our imprint survives it will never be out of print again.  It is the first in what we plan to be an exemplary series of reprints of classic modern Australian poetry.

We welcome suggestions of other hard-to-obtain classic collections which deserve revival in this way.

Watch this space for news of John Foulcher’s forthcoming new collection The Sunset Assumption which will be published by Pitt Street Poetry in July.