British Poetry Titles: Authors A to B

Published 2012. Chapbook, 34pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848612457 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

One of 5 chapbooks published in the summer of 2012, this was Seren Adams' first publication and concentrates on the small Somerset town of Radstock, and its history as a mining centre.

Published 2012. Paperback, 82pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781848612051 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

The Voice Thrower is from a batch of long poems begun in the 90's, arising in my ‘anti poetry' phase. The title should speak for itself, except it doesn't, which is the whole point of being a voice thrower. The poem had a twin, The Submissive Bastards , initially sharing the trope of a red sky at dusk, but TVT's sky turned into a horizon at sea, specifically from Portland looking west across Lyme Bay (Portlanders call it West Bay anyway). (Read more by clicking on the cover)

Published January 2025. Paperback, 412pp, 9 x 6ins, £19.95 / $32

ISBN 9781848619609

Before Dark: Collected Poems reflects Anderson’s peripatetic lifestyle of three decades. During a weekend in Paris in 1971, whilst teaching at the University of Grenoble, he met T.T. Wong, a young Chinese artist from Shanghai, and their long discussions cemented his aspiration to go East. English society had, he felt, since he was born into it shortly after the end of World War II, succeeded only in submerging his nose in the effluvium of a squalid sewer of class discriminations, so the time was more than ripe for him to bid farewell to the UK. Arriving, eventually, at the University of Hong Kong where T.T. Wong’s letter of introduction to a young Dostoevsky scholar heading a department had directed his feet, Anderson discovered that it was an institution where the ancien régime (Terms of Service finely calibrated to reflect skin pigmentation…) was firmly entrenched. After a good number of years he moved still further east, to Manila and the University of the Philippines. Through all these years, and the first few years of his return to the UK, the poems of Before Dark were written, along with the prose The Hoplite Journals, described by the novelist James Hamilton-Paterson as “enter[ing] that select pantheon of books to travel with, a vademecum ... A most remarkable achievement.”

Published 2018. Chapbook, 24pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848616165 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

A collection of re-written poems that, in their original form, were published in a book in Manila, where the author was then working. Asia is everywhere in these poems, permeating every line.

Published 2013. Chapbook, 30pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848613119. NOW WITHDRAWN. WE STILL HAVE A FEW COPIES IN STOCK

The Lower Reaches is framed within precise geography, the Lower Hope region of the Thames estuary where the author was born and grew up beside a river on which "the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empire" floated. Anderson lived for decades in the Far East. His meditation interrogates the formation of national identity and freights with poignant significance the old maxim that so much of British history happened overseas.

A few copies remain for sale. Subsequently collected in Obsequy for Lost Things (see above).

Published 2012. Paperback, 152pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848612129     TITLE WITHDRAWN AFTER THE RELEASE OF THE COLLECTED POEMS

Martin Anderson was born and grew up in England. Shearsman Books first published his work in the 1980s. Anderson has lived a large part of his life as an expatriate and many of his poetry collections have been published abroad. His poetry is, as a result, not well known in the UK. The poems of Snow , written whilst resident for almost three decades in the Far East, look both to that region for their ostensible subject matter and back to the UK. Snow is a collection in its own right, not simply borrowings from Anderson's earlier collections. Its choice and arrangement of poems suggests a terrain richer and more complex than those of individual poems and collections, and one within which they may be rewardingly re-encountered.

Published 1986. 40pp, centre-stapled chapbook. £7.50

ISBN 9780907562108

The author's second collection. A revised edition of this book appeared in the USA from Alma House Press, New York, in 1989.

Published 2013. Paperback, 292pp, 9x6ins, £16.95 / $25

ISBN 9781848612914 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

The Hoplite Journals — first issued here in 3 volumes over a period of 7 years — is characterised by rapid temporal and spatial shifts amidst observed and imagined realities. It returns again and again, however, to meditate upon notions of identity and of memory, of time and of space. It evokes events and places largely in South East and South Asia as well as the West, exploring allegiances and identities within the troubled context of mostly colonial and ex-colonial possessions.

Published 2006. Paperback, 136pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95.

ISBN 9780907562818. NOW WITHDRAWN, A FEW COPIES REMAIN IN STOCK

Published 2010. Paperback, 114pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95

ISBN 9781848611146. NOW WITHDRAWN, A FEW COPIES REMAIN IN STOCK

Published 2013. Paperback, 112pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95

ISBN 9781848612907. NOW WITHDRAWN, A FEW COPIES REMAIN IN STOCK

Shearsman Classics No. 7 (The Tudor Miscellanies Vol. 1) 

Published 2010. Paperback, 300pp, 9x6ins, £16.95 / $25

ISBN 9781848611030 [Download a sample from this book here .]

1557 saw the publication of this ground-breaking volume: the first printed anthology of contemporary poetry in English. The book is built on a foundation of two recently-deceased aristocratic poets, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had by their example given English poetry a new direction, above all with the introduction of the Petrarchan sonnet, but also with the invention of blank verse. The anthology was to have an enormous impact, giving witness to the latest developments in English verse for a far bigger public than would have been the norm in the mid-16th century, when manuscripts tended to circulate anonymously and in a small circle of gentlemen.

Shearsman Classics No. 8 (The Tudor Miscellanies Vol. 2)

Published 2010. Paperback, 116pp, 9x6ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848611047 [Download a sample from this book here .]

Following the publication of Tottel's Miscellany in 1557, a number of other such miscellanies appeared, none of them especially significant from an artistic point of view. In 1593, however, a still-unidentified gentleman known only by his initials (R.S.) published this relatively slim, well-printed and well-designed compilation, which included works by a number oif significant poets of the day—those identified are Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Lodge, Nicholas Breton, Robert Greene, George Peele, the Earl of Oxford, Sir Edward Dyer, and Thomas Watson. It is almost certain that the Phoenix of the title was Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), to whom the first three elegies in the book are dedicated.

Published 2024. Paperback, 88pp, 9 x 6ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781848618916 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

In her second collection Kate Ashton examines woman’s estate from the warring perspectives of creativity and procreativity. Born into her biological destiny, woman is harnessed at adolescence to procreative necessity; she may refuse, she must choose. But what if the unconscious leads inexorably towards another equally all-consuming fate, as artist?

The overwhelming gravitas, beauty and mystery of motherhood is presented in all its extraordinary, paradoxical reality. Here is an often jarringly intense examination of emotive and moral integrity, refuting soft focus. Dawning awareness of a distinctly matrix-centred spiritual reality; one that can find no foothold, no expression within any hierarchical system.

A majestic alternative worldview: primeval, anarchic, ambivalent, self-referential and innately free of masculine conceptualisation. One in which acts of artistic creation and procreation may either brutally oppose or embrace each other, but which always involve a tender agony of love.

Published June 2018. Paperback, 84pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781848615700 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

"I have been enjoying this new collection tremendously. Looking back on Atkins’ earlier collections, I was struck by a strange mixture of continuity and rupture. Some of the pieces are more radically disjunctive than before, which, to me, gives them a sense of immediacy and makes them more 'performative'. I also feel the influence of Beckett’s later work (in pieces like 'Fourth Night'). As always I appreciated the clarity and visuality of his prose and its capacity to engage with aesthetic and philosophical issues while generating powerful images, whether they are flamboyant or quietly meditative or somewhere in between. Another fine book of 'irresponsible texts'." —Michel Delville

Published 2007. Paperback, 104pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18.

ISBN 9781905700431 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Michael Ayres' Shearsman collection, following his Odyssey and Salt volumes, this book features shorter works than he has been known for in recent years.

Published 2013. Chapbook, 32pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848613126 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

"In this courageous book, Richard Berengarten calls on us to recognize—to know again—the archaic responsibilities of the poet, heir of Orpheus, singer of the kosmos, heir of the shamans, healers of the soul. Berengarten's subject is glory, not the glory we associate with kings or prelates, but the glory of the poet, who, in the poem, briefly catches the fleeting, evanescent experience that is simultaneously an experience of fulfillment, of being filled with an awe that only the weavings of language can express. In working out the propositions that pertain to this experience of magnanimity , Berengarten demonstrates his own magnanimous nature, the one always so evident in his own poems." —Norman Finkelstein

Published 2019. Chapbook, 36pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848616851 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Imagems 2 contains six statements by a poet who continues to challenge modernism and post-modernism alike. This chapbook complements and elaborates Richard Berengarten’s Imagems 1 (2013). In this sequel, the borders between poetic theory and practice blur, for some of these texts are prose-poems in themselves. While their themes are rooted in the here-now, their 12-point structures call to mind early 20th century manifestos and late 20th century memoranda. Themes include the birth of poetry in sound, breath, and inner speech; the interdependence of the universal and the particular; and language, light and vision. Imagems 3 is on the way.

Published 2017. Paperback, 204pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23.00

ISBN 9781848615120 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Spanning a period of fifteen years, these five ‘Inter-views’ with Richard Berengarten explore the many facets of his writings. Hospitably and expansively, they yield insights into the work of a poet of our time, his methods, motives, and patterns of thought.

     Based in dialogue, an interview is always a collaborative venture. It discovers difference and clarifies commonalities between writer and reader. By working closely together in composing, editing and revisiting transcripts for each interview, Richard Berengarten and his five interlocutors reveal the potential of the literary interview itself, as they articulate and test its reticent boundaries.

The Shearsman Library 5

Published 2018. Chapbook, 32pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848615892  [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

"In this courageous book, Richard Berengarten calls on us to recognize—to know again—the archaic responsibilities of the poet, heir of Orpheus, singer of the kosmos, heir of the shamans, healers of the soul. Berengarten's subject is glory, not the glory we associate with kings or prelates, but the glory of the poet, who, in the poem, briefly catches the fleeting, evanescent experience that is simultaneously an experience of fulfillment, of being filled with an awe that only the weavings of language can express. In working out the propositions that pertain to this experience of magnanimity , Berengarten demonstrates his own magnanimous nature, the one always so evident in his own poems." —Norman Finkelstein

Published 2022. Chapbook, 36pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848618503 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Sonnet-sequences have a history of nearly 1,000 years. But a sequence of villanelles? Here, perhaps for the first time ever in English, is a suite of twenty-four of them. The delicate instrument of the villanelle is played, lightly and gently, to salute Tao Yuanming, Chinese poet, Daoist, recluse, and a great Lord of Wine, who lived more than 1,500 years ago.

Published 2024. Paperback, 116pp, 9 x 6ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848619197 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

“Indelible and deeply resonant, Linda Black’s Interior demonstrates a poet at the peak of their powers. This collection constitutes a wondrous neo-Cartesian studio evoking an ars poetica that emphasizes language as both trace and palimpsest. Here, Black explores the intersections of writing, desire and creativity in marvellously fragmented and Frankensteinian ways. In haunting poems, the poet-artist is resurrected as defamiliarizing and uncanny: ‘I rest / my hand outside / myself & draw’. Interior gives priority to improvisation and bricolage, and a questioning semiotics, as it lightly and powerfully sketches the body’s relationship to the world. Black employs compelling dualisms to engage with both the breakdown and articulacy of an utterly contemporary language fully attuned to the ineffable: ‘In my heart my two loves merge. This is all I can tell you.’” —Cassandra Atherton

Published 2010. Paperback, 116pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848610828 [Download a sample from this book here .]

In 2008 Shearsman published Elisabeth Bletsoe's most recent collection, Landscape from a Dream . We now offer a companion volume containing all—or almost all—of her previously published work, which has been out of print for some time. The book contains a number of short pieces, but the collection revolves around three major sequences: 'The Regardians', 'Portraits of the Artist's Sister' and 'Pharmacopoeia'. The book confirms Elisabeth Bletsoe's place as one of the most fascinating poets of her generation.

The Shearsman Library 12

Published 2018. Paperback, 116pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848615953 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

In 1977 and 1981, the late Martin Booth — then a poet and small-press publisher, but today better-known as a novelist — published two collections of work about Knotting, the Bedfordshire village where he then lived: The Knotting Sequence and The Cnot Dialogues . The books were published in fine, limited-run editions by The Elizabeth Press in New Rochelle, New York, and few copies travelled across the Atlantic. Indeed, the second of the two books was one of the final books to be published by Elizabeth and received only limited distribution. Here we have spliced the two books together, otherwise unchanged.



Published 2009. 188pp, 9x6ins. [Download the introduction to this book here .]

ISBN 9781848610422 (hardcover) £29.95 / $45

ISBN 9781848610439 (paperback) £14.95 / $23

A Manner of Utterance offers a collection of responses to J.H. Prynne's poetry by his readers: not merely academics, but poets, composers, teachers and a painter (Ian Friend, one of whose works is featured on the cover). The contributors include Ian Brinton (also editor of the volume), David Caddy, Ian Friend, Richard Humphreys, Li Zhi-min, Rod Mengham, Keston Sutherland, John Douglas Templeton and Erik Ulman.

Published 2013. Paperback, 148pp, 9x6ins, £14.95 / $23

ISBN 9781848612969 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

This volume, featuring essays by a number of poets and critics, is the first survey of Peter Hughes' poetry, and is published simultaneously with his Selected Poems (see above). The book features contributions from Andrew Bailey, Riccardo Duranti, John Hall, Simon Howard, David Kennedy, Simon Marsh, Ian McMillan, Peter Riley, Derek Slade, John Welch and Nigel Wheale.

Published 2015. Chapbook, 30pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848614505 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Watersong begins with the first of the great cholera epidemics of 19th Century England. Focussing on the poet’s home city of Exeter, the poems interlace select details from Exeter’s 1832 cholera outbreak, in which over 400 people died, with imagined narratives of the epidemic, and other related episodes in the city,factual and invented.

Published 2019. Chapbook, 32pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £7.50 / $10.95

ISBN 9781848616837 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

The Franks Casket (or Auzon Casket) is an 8th century Anglo-Saxon treasure chest, donated to the British Museum by a private owner from Auzon, France. Made from whalebone, the front, back, sides and lid of this small chest are decorated with runic inscriptions, some Latin text and images from various religious and mythical traditions. Each rune has an equivalent letter in the Latin alphabet, allowing for Anglo-Saxon and modern English translations. Each rune also has a pictorial value: for example, in the runic ᚠᛁᛋᚳ (‘fisc’), f signifies ‘wealth’, i ‘ice’, s ‘sun’ and c ‘torch’, yielding a sequence of four images. To write the poems in this collection, I determined the sequence of images yielded by each runic word and then used these images, or variants of them, to write the poems. Using this multilevel technique of ‘translation’, the following poems are an attempt to capture something of the layered histories, from ancient times to present, of the place where I now live: the River Teign and its surrounding area. —Andy Brown

Published 2014. Paperback, 262pp, 9x6ins, £16.95 / $25

ISBN 9781848613201 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

This book offers a critical overview of the work of the British poet Kelvin Corcoran who, over nearly 30 years, has established a reputation as one of the most significant innovative British lyric poets; 'a giant of the middle generation' as Andrew Duncan has described him, placed between the radical poetics of the '60s and '70s and subsequent generations. Essays by Martin Anderson, Zoë Brigley Thompson, Andy Brown, Ian Davidson, John Hall, Lee Harwood, David Herd, Luke Kennard, Katherine Peddie, Peter Riley, Jos Smith, Simon Smith, Alicia Stubbersfield, Scott Thurston, plus some recent poetry by Kelvin Corcoran.

Shearsman Classics No. 15

Published 2012. Paperback, 162pp, 9x6ins, £14.95 / $23

ISBN 9781848612518 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

In Browning's bicentenary year, Shearsman publishes several volumes devoted to his work, starting with a collection of his shorter "long" poems, organised as the poet wished when he put together his complete works. 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' is here, alongside 'The Last Duchess' and many other favoutite poems.

Browning divided many of his poems into groups: Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances, Men and Women (the latter also being the title of one of his more successful verse collections). This is the first of 3 volumes dedicated to this part of his work.

Published 2019. Paperback, 296pp, 9 x 6ins, £17.95 / $25

ISBN 9781848616257 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

A substantial review of Robert Sheppard's career to date, this volume includes writings and appreciations by Joanne Ashcroft, Charles Bernstein, James Byrne, Ailsa Cox, Nikolai Duffy, Patricia Farrell, Allen Fisher, Robert Hampson, Alison Mark, Christopher Madden, Adam Hampton, Tom Jenks, Mark Scroggins, Zoë Skoulding, Scott Thurston; plus a roundtable featuring Gilbert Adair, Adrian Clarke, Alan Halsey, Chris McCabe, Geraldine Monk and Sandeep Parmar.