You didn’t think it was possible. On Saturday, the rather grandly named Exmouth Market Hall – which is in fact the church hall of the wonderful 1880 Italianate Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, in (natch) Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell, London – was the scene of a Renaissance of independent publishing.
Yes! A Renaissance.
Conceived by the “deliciously grumpy and adversarial Charles Boyle, the Lee Marvin of poetry”(says Chris Hamilton-Emery) in response to the swingeing Arts cuts earlier this year, the first annual independent publishers’ fair packed out the hall, lured a street singer inside from the pavement for a fantastic set, sent carrier bags groaning out the door, put a smile on the face of the coffee shop owner opposite, and generally established one salient fact. THERE IS A BUZZ AROUND SMALL PRESSES.
The presses at the event – with their frankly lovely wares spread out glistening before them on a variety of tables – were Anvil, Arc, Carcanet, CB Editions, Donut, Egg Box, Enitharmon, flipped eye, Happenstance, if p then q, Nine Arches, Penned in the Margins, the Poetry Book Society (not a press, okay), Rack Press, Reality Street, Salt, Shearsman, Shoestring, Sidekick, Ward Wood, Waterloo, Waywiser, and zimZalla. There was a special table set up for mostly New Directions, and mostly books by Michael Horovitz, who opened the event with a half-hour performance which yours truly missed. That was because I was too flipping tired from the day before to arrive before noon, and I do regret it – but not even Ms Baroque can be everywhere.
But here’s the thing. I walked in at noon, and there was my Oscar & Henry publisher, Nicholas Murray of Rack Press, arrayed next to Warwickshire’s Nine Arches press, right by the door. The room was too crowded even to really get into – so many people there that I was stuck in the doorway for about 20 minutes while people going through it stopped to say hello. (My coffee nearly didn’t get drunk!) This buzz continued all day, and there were many bulging carrier bags leaving that hall. It wasn’t all poets, either: it was people off the street, and people who read poetry but don’t write it, and general readers, and friends of readers. Mothers of readers. And everybody was happy. It was like a holiday.
There were readings all day in an upstairs room – I read with Rack Press, along with Roisin Tierney and Nick Murray – Nick read his scathing, rollicking poem against the Coalition – and stayed upstairs to hear Nancy Gaffield read from her new, Forward-shortlisted first collection, Tokaido Road, (brought to you by CB Editions). Loved hearing her read.
But by then, that was an hour up in the readings. I wanted to look at books, too. And I did look at them – many of them. Here were the things that were wonderful:
- to see such a variety of presses together: from über-experimental zimZalla to formalist trans-Atlantic Waywiser. Celebrating the sweep of current poetry practice, not just one or other bit of it.
- to see the covers all arrayed upwards, so you could really see the books – house styles, and different and also surprisingly similar aesthetics, and also a chance for the designers to have their moment.
- to be able to peruse. To see things you might never see otherwise unless at a reading.
- to be able to see the sense of a given press, the spectrum of their books, with some surprises – editions of “canon” poets by experimental presses,
earlier editions of books now published elsewhere, interesting juxtapositions. - some standout gorgeous books-as-objects, inventive packaging and formats and beautiful designs – in some cases, utter perfect simplicity.
What wasn’t so wonderful was that I really can’t afford to buy any books at the moment. I’d have loved to get one book from each press. I feel I need a copy of the Reality Street Book of Sonnets. And the zimZalla and if p then q stands were tantalising me like sweet shops. There was a lovely WD Snodgrass edition for only £8 on the Waywiser table (as well as several books I already have), but I walked away, and a friend later said he’d bought it. Carcanet was giving away copies of PN Review magazine, but I subscribed shortly before my job ended, so I didn’t even need that! (And admittedly I’ve recently received some review copies from Carcanet, including the tantalising Ashbery translations of Rimbaud – and I know I can’t exactly complain that there are not enough books in Baroque Mansions. That is not our main problem here.)
(Indeed, the esteemed quasi-Mr-Baroque asked the other day if he could borrow a book that was on the desk, to read on the train. He held it up. “It’s your book!” I had to tell him. “I borrowed it from you the other week!” He looked it it enquiringly: “Ohh…”)
But I think lots of people did buy ten, or more, or almost, books. People were very happy, delightedly showing each other the contents of their bags, out in the street.
I did break down and buy something, as it happens, having said I wouldn’t. I bought Francis Ponge’s Unfinished Ode to Mud, published by CB Editions. I remembered having come across Ponge before, being blown way by his dizzying, delirious attention to the details of thingness. And I bought a Shearsman magazine, which I’ve been intending to do for ages. That was at the last minute.
So, all hail Charles Boyle! His visionary effort shows what we can do. It shows what can be done all on our own – just publishers, writers, and readers – without that Renaissance-greaser we think we need, which we call “funding.”It shows what can happen when you concentrate on the solution, rather than just the problem. Maybe we’ll find it’s more fun, out in the real world, in the fresh air, just making stuff happen without having to tick the boxes… so maybe we should read it as an instruction: to Free Verse!
Next year I hope I’ll be wielding a little more of a budget.