Iron Press is small but beautiful. It was set up in the North-East by the writer Peter Mortimer in the long-lost days of 1973, and Mortimer has remained the editor to this day. In more than a third of a century it has produced a truly eclectic body of work, championing the most interesting writers from its own region, the rest of the country, and sometimes world-wide.

Among its more distinctive anthologies are Voices of Conscience – an ambitious collection of work from poets persecuted (and sometimes murdered) by the state, and probably the only book to include both Oscar Wilde and Ho Chi Minh. The Poetry of Perestroika was the only anthology in the west to concentrate on poets emerging in the glasnost era, while Star Trek - The Poems was a different kettle of fish altogether. Iron is the country's leading independent publisher of haiku, and published the first two books by David Almond in his pre-Skellig days. Latest on the list is The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse, edited by Eileen Jones, and a collection which acknowledges the impact of performance poetry and slams.