The Contemporary Small Press: A Symposium
The Boardroom, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster
10:00-17:00

The Contemporary Small Press Book Fair
The Fyvie Hall, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster
18:00-21:00

Friday 20th February 2015

The last decade has witnessed a turn to considering the legacies of modernism prevalent and operative within contemporary literature and culture. Within the scholarly discourses surrounding this shift, there has been little discussion of the status of the small press in the twenty-first century, and its vital role in the dissemination of avant-garde writing. This symposium seeks to address the role and status of the small press in the UK as a field of academic enquiry. We aim to offer a forum that will bring together a number of small presses, and facilitate productive dialogue between the diverse publishers working with contemporary innovative writers and poets.

The day symposium consists of three panels of scholars, publishers, writers, and poets, which will explore the history of the small press, literary politics and the relationship between the small press and the mainstream, and take up issues surrounding materialities of the text and small press publishing. The Contemporary Small Press Book Fair following the symposium will showcase and market the rich and varied work currently being published by small presses.

Poets and writers reading from their work throughout the day, and into the evening, include Carol Watts, Peter Hughes, Toby Litt, Robert Hampson, Jennifer Cooke, Nicholas Royle, Amy Cutler, Rod Mengham, Tony White, and Michael Nath.

Participating presses include Oystercatcher Press, Reality Street, Route, Veer Books, Comma Press, and Equipage.

A collection of new writing by writers and poets taking part in the symposium, outLINES: from the Small Press, published in collaboration with Oystercatcher Press, will be available on the day.

The symposium is free to all but booking is essential. Places for the symposium can be reserved through Eventbrite: https://eventbrite.co.uk/event/15401181348/

For further details about the conference, or if you are the editor of a small press and would like to take part in the Book Fair, please contact Leigh Wilson (wilsonl@westminster.ac.uk), or Georgina Colby (g.colby@westminster.ac.uk).

– See more at: http://instituteformodern.co.uk/2015/the-contemporary-small-press-a-symposium-and-book-fair-february-20?#sthash.pKvJC2UR.dpuf

The Blue Bus is pleased to present a reading by John Welch, Kim Taplin and Jeremy Hilton  on Tuesday 17^th February from 7.30 at The Lamb (in the upstairs room), 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1. This is the ninety-seventh event in THE BLUE BUS series. Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions).

Jeremy Hilton’s poetry has been appearing in magazines and anthologies since the 1960s, worldwide as well as in the UK. He has published twelve collections in the alternative presses, the most recent being “Lighting Up Time” (Selected Poems 1991 – 2005, Troubador Press, Leicester, 2006). From 1995 to 2012 he edited and published the acclaimed poetry magazine, Fire. He has also written three novels, one of which, “A Sound Like Angels Weeping”, appeared from Brimstone Press in 2013. He also composes contemporary chamber music. He lives in North Oxfordshire with his partner, Kim Taplin.

Kim Taplin’s first book  The English Path (1979) explored the cultural significance of footpaths, and her first poetry pamphlet Muniments drew on the history and natural history of ten nuclear weapon sites. She has continued writing both prose, including Tongues in Trees, Life with Art and Walking Aloud, and poetry, with collections from Enitharmon, Redbeck, Flarestack and the Sixties Press.

Inner and outer journeys, and the relationship between human beings and the natural world, are central themes in all her writing.

Born in London in 1942, John Welch has been living in Hackney since the early 1970s. In 1975 he founded The Many Press which, over the next twenty seven years published a great many pamphlets and full length collections of new poetry, as well as two magazines. His most recent collection, ‘Its Halting Measure’, appeared from Shearsman in 2012. Shearsman published his Collected Poem in 2008. He has written extensively on  his personal experience of psychoanalysis and its relationship to his writing. He has recently been working with the Iraqi poet Abdulkareem Kasid on English versions of his poems and a collection of these will appear later this year.