Welcome to the Shearsman Books website. Shearsman is a very active small press based in Oxfordshire, England, publishing mainly poetry. We publish around 50 books and two issues of Shearsman magazine every year. The list of authors is completely international, although there are of course more British authors than those from elsewhere. We have a very strong translation list, with a particular emphasis on Hispanic poetry — whether from Latin America or the Peninsula — but we also have fascinating books from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Scandinavia, Turkey, and elsewhere. Use the menu bar at the top of the page to get around, and explore the shop (far left in the menu bar), where you can find all of our titles that are in print.
Carol Watts lives in London. Her poetry includes the collections Sundog (Veer Books, 2013) Occasionals (Reality Street Editions, 2011) and Wrack (Reality Street Editions, 2007), and the artist’s book of prose chronicles alphabetise (2005), as well as three collections from Shearsman Books, the latest of which is Mimic Pond (2024). She has also published several chapbooks with Oystercatcher, Torque Press and Equipage. Collaboration is increasingly central to her practice.
Mervyn Taylor is a Trinidad-born poet who divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and his island home, where he has conducted workshops with youths in prison. In New York, he has taught at Bronx Community College, The New School, and at the Young Adult Learning Academy, where "arts and learning came together as never before, or since." Once a member of the infamous Bud Jones Poets, his work has appeared recently in many anthologies and journals. Says artist LeRoy Clarke, "His poems remind me of old houses in Belmont, with their latticework, the fine lacework on the tables inside." About Taylor's poems Derek Walcott observed, "The sense of search, of the avoidance of flash, mutes his meters to an admirable degree, and the tone, which he found remarkably early, keeps him separate and unique."
Author photo by Cathy Ronalds.
Petra White was born in Adelaide in 1975. She is the author of six previous poetry collections , the first five of which were published in Australia — including Cities (Vagabond Press 2021). She currently lives in Belfast with her family, and works as a policy advisor. Her first UK publication is Those Galloping Horses (Shearsman Books, 2024).
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Shearsman Books Ltd registered office 30–31 St. James Place, Mangotsfield, Bristol BS16 9JB ( address not for correspondence ). Registered in England as company no. 4910496.