The primary publication I am launching at the Small Publishers Fair this year is The Parts of the Body That Stink, from Hesterglock Press. The book was first released in an extended edition earlier in 2024, in a hardback, and now is released in paperback, in its final form. Five long poems, each about a part of the human anatomy. A book reflecting on the smell of ourselves as a reminder of our creatureliness and mortality, in a time where people seem to want to escape that, or are forced to, through daily technology usage. It’s a kind of sequel, in form anyway, to The Great Apes, my attempt to create something semi-original in tone and timbre for the long poem.
What I’d like to mention is the nature of working with the press, Hesterglock. Paul Hawkins has published two of my previous books and our relationship over the years has been the ideal for a publisher editor as collaborator and encourager. Hesterglock’s work has been important, offering books that are genuinely unpredictable and exciting, and from poets all over the world, as well as many making their debuts. I would say, such is the specific culture Hesterglock has built – such is the distinct taste of the list, in all its wideness – that it is doing something truly different, and that wouldn’t exist without it. Perhaps this is most obviously felt in it’s embrace of poem brut poetry – that is work that is handmade, physical, messy, that harks back to the post-war brutalist, cobra and the like, but actually comes from a different place. It comes from a particular kind of weird, playful, aggravated English experience. Something that touches on class, sometimes, and social alienation, sometimes, but in a particularly English way, turns this into an eccentricity that verges on volatility, but stays in play. It’s immediate, colourful, complex, energised. It is this that has made Hesterglock a place I feel at home, and Paul has been instrumental in helping me shape the www.poembrut.com movement (others have called it that, not me), along with Julia Rose Lewis and many others.
I believe it’s a moment where Paul and Hesterglock are taking a little time to wind back but remain, to recharge and lie fallow, but in that there is a moment for the many many poets who have benefitted from the press’ selfless championing to celebrate what has been done, and what will be done. I’m glad my time in British poetry has coincided with Hesterglock.https://hesterglockpress.weebly.com/
The Parts of the Body That Stink is available on amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1739556607/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1FJW2E0ACJD58