Rack Press at Hay Festival of Literature

Rack Press pamphlets and poem cards will be available during the three day Hay Poetry Festival 28-30th May, a fringe event to the main Hay Festival, taking place at Oriel Gallery, Salem Chapel, Bell Bank, Hay on Wye with a range of poets appearing including Peter Finch, Wendy Mulford, John James, Chris Torrance and David Greenslade.

Information from goodbard@yahoo.co.uk

Rack Press Poem Cards on Sale

This year's new venture from Rack Press, Poem Card No 1, an attractively produced  folding card that can be used as a greetings card (see illustration to the right) is now available at two Welsh outlets, The Rowan Tree in Presteigne, Powys and Pemberton's in Hay-on-Wye, also in Powys (all ready for the imminent influx of the metropolitan literati at next month's Guardian Hay Festival of Literature).  

The card consists of a reproduction of a contemporary painting by Leeds-based artist, Elizabeth Neylan, Acapulco, together with a poem by Rack Press founder, Nicholas Murray in response to the painting.  This literary pairing of poem and painting is called ekphrasis.

Cards can also be ordered directly from Rack Press either individually at £1.65 (post free) or at a special discount of 8 cards for £10.

Latest Review Praises Byron Beynon

The latest Rack Press review of Byron Beynon's pamphlet, Cuffs (2008) has appeared in the winter issue of The Seventh Quarry (No 9).  The reviewer finds this: "A slim publication of excellent and successful poems. It is an individual and impressive voice that is threaded with focussed intelligence and maturity. A first class poet who really understands the importance of craft, and the emotional and intellectual weight of his chosen words."  Deserved criticism of this fine collection, copies of which are still available.

Successful London Launch of Latest Pamphlets

Left to right here at the London launch of the 2009 series of Rack Press poetry pamphlets on Wednesday 21st January at the endearingly old-fashioned and quirky Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury are: Siobhán Campbell, William Palmer, John Powell Ward, and publisher Nicholas Murray. A fine crowd turned out to hear all the poets read and the new "Rack Poem Cards" were unveiled, No 1 being a collaboration between Leeds-based artist Elizabeth Neylan and Nicholas Murray whose poem Acapulco was written in response to her painting of that title. The cards are available from Rack Press at £1.50 each or 8 for £10.

Three New Rack Poetry Pamphlets Launched

Three new titles from Rack Press for 2009 are being launched in London on 21st January at an event at the Swedenborg Hall, Bloomsbury Way, London WC1 at 6.30-8.30. Readings and free glass of wine and free entry.

The titles are:-

Darwin Among the Machines
by Siobhán Campbell

Is the poem a machine made of words? Is nature on the side of the machines? Taking off from the steam shovel, this sequence pits the poetic impulse against its traditional enemies to see if they may have more in common than we think.


Siobhán Campbell’s publications include The Permanent Wave and The Cold that Burns (Blackstaff Press) and That water speaks in tongues (Templar Poetry). Her new collection, Cross-Talk, is forthcoming from Seren. An award-winner in the National, Troubadour and Wigtown competitions, she lives in London and lectures at Kingston University on the MFA in Creative Writing.


‘an outstanding ear for the music of language…. the rhymes and half-rhymes give the verse a rewarding sureness and slyness. Siobhán Campbell’s sense of cadenced disturbance marks her out as someone worth listening to with attention.’
Robert Crawford


‘Written with a cool eye and clear compassion, these poems are torpedoes lined with feather strokes… very luminous and steady-eyed.’
Bernard O’ Donoghue


An Instruction from Madame S.
by William Palmer

These are poems of place; how we change the rooms and landscapes in which we live, and how we are changed by them. Place is governed by season and weather, it is our home or an anonymous hotel, a city or wilderness.


William Palmer was brought up in Montgomeryshire in Wales and now lives in south-west London. He has written five acclaimed novels, a collection of short stories and a collection of poems, The Island Rescue (2007). He has published stories and poems in a wide range of magazines and journals in the UK and Ireland, including Critical Quarterly, London Magazine, The Literary Review, The Shop, Stand and Poetry Review. His work has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. He is a regular book reviewer for The Independent and The Literary Review.


‘There is a kindness in William Palmer’s poems: a generosity of perception, language and melody (read him aloud), but he is also generous in his poems’ precision and economy. William Palmer’s poetry never excludes readers but it does challenge them at the same time as it charms them. He is one of our most interesting poets, and his work in The Island Rescue is a complete delight.’
David Morley



Variations on Four Places
by John Powell Ward

This sequence in four movements explores the poet’s response to four areas of England and Wales – Gower, Radnor, Somerset andGloucestershire – that have particular personal resonance for a poet with a deep engagement with the Welsh and English spirit of place.



John Powell Ward was born in Suffolk and educated at the Universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Wales. He lectured at the University of Wales at Swansea for 25 years. He was editor of Poetry Wales from 1975 to 1980 and has written critical studies of R.S. Thomas and Worsdworth and was editor of Seren’s Borderlines series.

‘his writing arrives from a point where rational discourse and the liberating resources of the imagination merge’
Poetry Review

‘John Powell Ward is a poet who takes risks with language; his poems are densely packed, full of echoes and chains of linking sound.’
New Welsh Review




Each of these titles is
published in a limited edition of 150 copies, the first fifty of which are signed by the author. A set of three can be obtained at the special price of £10 until 31 January 2009.
To order send a cheque, payable to Rack Press, to
Rack Press, The Rack, Kinnerton, Presteigne, Powys LD8 2PF. Postage free.

More Reviews of Rack Press Titles

It is good to see yet more positive reviews of the 2008 Rack Press titles. The latest issue of Poetry Wales reviews all three pamphlets by Byron Beynon, Steve Griffiths, and David Wheatley and the latest issue of Poetry London reviews David Wheatley's Lament for Ali Farka Touré, welcoming the way it begins "cheekily, lyrically, delightfully" and calling the pamphlet "an attractively produced limited edition".

Congratulations to Steve Griffiths, also, whose latest full length collection, An Elusive State: entering al-Chwm is just published by Cinnamon Press Rack Press is proud to have published earlier this year his collection Landing which broke a long silence and we understand there is even more to come!

Cinnamon describe the collection as follows:-

"A man hits fifty. He grew up surrounded by a belief in progress. Now he, and the world
around him, are not so sure. He creates a Utopia to comfort himself. Steve Griffiths's
cycle of poems, Al-Chwm, tells the story of the life and death of an imaginary utopia.
The cycle began with a vision in the province of Granada which merged a twilight in the
hill town of Montefrio with one in Griffiths's home village in Anglesey, North Wales, as
the lights came on one by one. Al-Chwm, first heard on Radio Three in 2006, is a
parallel universe, a magical epic, a comfort, a mystery."

Rack Press Goes to Venice

Rack Press publisher Nicholas Murray will be reading from his own 2006 collection, The Narrators and from new work at

Old World Books
Al Ponte del Gheto Vechio
Cannaregio 1190
30121 Venezia

On Monday 13th October at an event hosted by John Francis Phillimore of Old World Books. The event is open to all.