The Price is Wrong
By Ross Bradshaw, Five Leaves on 06 January 2009 at 08:08:56
Just reading another excellent issue of Critical Survey, published by Berghahn one of several academic journals I’d love to subscribe to across the literary, history, political and Jewish worlds. But I can’t afford to. Who can? Without easy access to an academic library I rely on begging the odd copy from editors.
Critical Survey, though not always easy, is a three times a year journal of “critical practice and literary theory”, “an essential resource for everyone involved in the field of literary studies”. No, not everyone, academics only – with a good stockholding academic library – as copies for individuals cost a tenner a time for a little over 100 pages (£112 for institutional subs). That is very cheap compared to many academic journals. The only journal I know that keeps its price down for individuals (institutional subs are another matter) is Race & Class, which came out of “the movement” before going into the hands of the academic journal publisher Sage.
It’s hard to keep up. No local public library where I live now subscribes to London Review of Books. TLS is better represented but hardly universal.
It’s a conspiracy against the poor and the non-academics!
I would have thought that the publishers – and the editors – would prefer a higher sale or readership. And they would get that if they let us poverty stricken proles into the club.
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Scottish readers
By Ross Bradshaw, Five Leaves on 05 January 2009 at 21:21:16
Scottish readers, and poetry nuts from elsewhere who like a long journey might want to pencil in a visit to St Andrews for the STAnza poetry festival – that nation’s answer to Aldeburgh. The full programme is on stanzapoetry The Festival runs from 18-22 March and on the Saturday, from 2.00-5.00, there will be a “Poets’ Market” in the Town Hall where stall-holders will display and sell magazines, pamphlets, chap books, postcards, poetry artwork and CDs and offer hand-outs, tasters, flyers, special offers, cheap or free offers and past editions.
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Gone fishing
By Ross Bradshaw, Five Leaves on 02 January 2009 at 18:18:36
On the last blog posting of last year, Stephanie Moncrieff – Inpress’s Managing Director – announced she was going, and welcomed her replacement, Rachael Ogden.
Because our blogs are up during the current month, then shuffled off into the monthly archive – and most normal humans have something better to do on New Year’s Eve - her announcement perhaps got lost. Those who know her may think that this was an unusually shy and retiring way of announcing her retirement, but I’m happy to ensure that her blog send off gets a little more oomph. Readers who have no interest in our internal affairs will have to skip this post.
Stephanie Moncrieff came to Inpress from a background in sales of legal and taxation books, probably as far from the publishing interests of Inpress members as it is possible to be. It must have seemed to her at times that Inpress members were in competition to publish the least saleable books (you try getting plays in translation or collections by quite unknown poets into any chain bookshop if you don’t believe me). And with 40 or so publishing members, many of which are one person operations, she must have found the experience, well, different to working for a major transnational publisher. Without going into too much internal detail, when she came to Inpress, four years ago, the group was at a pretty low ebb. Together with Imelda Quinn, Stephanie pulled the group round, raised the money to build a good, functional website, and whipped members into line in (more or less) producing the information that our trade reps need (more or less) in time. Inpress is fully funded by the Arts Council and she rebuilt this important relationship.
But she is off soon – back to Australia – once her hand over period is finished and Rachael Ogden is able to work out the mechanics of how we operate. It is hardly revealing any secrets to say that Stephanie has found it hard to go, to let go, but she is certain she is handing the organisation on to the best person we could find.
Rachael Ogden has been literature officer for the Arts Council in the north east, but also has experience of promoting events and readings, supporting funding bids and working with Inpress members on her patch – Iron Press, Smokestack, Flambard. She starts on 5th January.
Rachael takes over at a time Inpress is in reasonable shape, with some new Board members and some new Inpress members. Over the last year Alcemi (literature publisher from Wales), Poetry London (quarterly journal), Northway (specialist jazz publisher), Afflame (fiction from overseas) have joined the group, Shoestring (mostly poetry) is about to join and there are plenty old members who she needs to get to know too.
I am sure that all Inpress members are grateful to Stephanie, and look forward to working with Rachael as we move on to what comes next.
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Adrian Mitchell
By Ross Bradshaw, Five Leaves on 01 January 2009 at 17:17:49
The first time I came across Adrian Mitchell must have been in the mid-70s. The earliest poem I can find by him on my shelves is the wonderful “A Tourist Guide to England”, published in a small pamphlet by the (now long defunct) British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign, a pacifist campaign. The booklet, Green and Pleasant Land, predictably says that “The artists and poets gave their work without payment” with all profits to the Campaign. At the cover price of 10p it is hard to see it being a great money spinner, but reading it again there are some great poems.
Adrian’s of course stands out. The poem is a deceptively simple polemic about the British involvement in Ireland: Please understand./We understand the Irish/Because we’ve been sending soldiers to Ireland/For hundreds and hundreds of years // First we tried to educate them/With religion, famine and swords./But the Irish were slow to learn.
Later I attended many of his readings, organised some. When Cruise missiles came to Britain the local CND group gave out his “On the Beach at Cambridge” on demonstrations. From time to time I have given talks on my favourite poems, and his poem on Victor Jara of Chile is always there. It can make people cry. At his own readings Adrian always read that poem and every time you knew it was tearing at his emotions the same way it was for the audience.
Later still, with Andy Croft, Adrian edited our book Red Sky at Night, an anthology of socialist verse. Of course William Blake was in it; Adrian always loved Blake. The book went on to be our best selling title, with Barnes and Noble in the USA buying 2,000 copies. America sure has need of socialist poetry. The last time we spoke was to discuss whether to reprint or do a new edition some time.
I was abroad when Adrian died and did not hear for a couple of days, reading an obituary in an internet café on Christmas Eve. It is hard to imagine Adrian no longer around. Michael Kustow wrote a fine obituary in the Guardian, Michael Horowitz in the Independent. There is more on his own publisher site, Bloodaxe, and something of a biography on the site of Ripping Yarns, the second hand bookshop run by his wife Celia, to whom we send condolences.
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