Inpress member Anvil Press (not to be confused with Anvil Books in Ireland) is forty this autumn. There will of course be national street parties, or at the very least some articles in the broadsheets.

My own favourite Anvil book is a version of The Song of Songs translated by Peter Jay, where he makes more lyrical and erotic that bunch of poems that peeks out excitedly from the Bible. The standard King James version is good, but Jay’s is better.

Peter Jay founded Anvil in that year of revolutions, 1968. It would seem wrong to pick out more from their available backlist of 300 books, out of the 400 they have published, but I can remember a terrific reading by the Irish poet Martina Evans a few years ago so she can represent the rest as a recommendation.

It is hard to think, though that their best selling poet is other than Carol Ann Duffy, whose first four collections came from Anvil – all still available.

I suspect though, that in the poetry world Anvil is best regarded for its translation, which occupies about a third of its berths. There can’t be many publishers in the UK whose list includes five Nobel Prize winners but Anvil has Odysseus Elytis, Octavio Paz, Salvatore Quasimodo, George Seferis and Rabindranath Tagore.

Anvil's first title in 1968 was the Venetian Aldo Vianello's Time of a
Flower, translated by Richard Burns. For their birthday they are publishing
a specially commissioned new selection of Vianello's poetry.