About Smokestack Books
Smokestack aims to keep open a space for what is left of the English radical poetic tradition in the twenty-first century.
Smokestack champions poets who are unfashionable, radical, left-field and working a long way from the metropolitan centres of cultural authority.
Smokestack is interested in the World as well as the Word; believes that poetry is a part of and not apart from society; argues that if poetry does not belong to everyone it is not poetry.
Smokestack’s list includes books by Katrina Porteous, Georgi Gospodinov, Alison Fell, Sebastian Barker and Martín Espada, new poetry from Guatemala, France, Siberia and the other USA, as well as new editions of radical classics by Heinrich Heine and Nicola Vaptsarov.
‘Ah-oh, smokestack lightning
Shinin’, just like gold
Why don’t ya hear me cryin’?’
Howling Wolf
‘and on every side
smokestacks were dancing on rooftops.’
Vladimir Mayakovsky
‘The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack…
Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent,
For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse.’
Walt Whitman
“Smokestack Books is a welcome addition to the poetry publishing world.” – Critical Survey
“...don’t assume that books from left of centre Middlesbrough press Smokestack will be about whippets and Federation ale.” – Sphinx
“Smokestack has a great squad of radical poets.” – Adrian Mitchell
Featured Titles
 | Hole by Kathleen Kenny Kathleen Kenny was brought up in a family where her father and her brother never spoke to each other. Hole is the story of a lifelong struggle to understand the unspoken secrets contained in the silences of her childhood, to measure the damage and the hurt of its 'strange normality'. £7.95 |  | Keir Hardie Street by Alan Morrison Allan Jackdaw, an unremembered early twentieth-century poet, undertakes a fantastical journey on the hidden Sea-Green Line of the London Underground. Along the way he meets the ghosts of William Blake, Robert Tressell and John Davidson before disembarking in a secret, parallel city, a living, bustling socialist London. £7.95 |
 | Pavilion by Deborah Tyler-Bennett Welcome to the Pleasure Dome. Pavilion is a celebration of the world of the English dandy, its gorgeous peacock feathers and fading glamour. £7.95 |  | The Seer Sung Husband by Bob Beagrie The Seer Sung Husband tells the story of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Northern rebellion that briefly defied the authority of Church and State. £7.95 |
Online Catalogue:
Contact Details:
w: http://www.smokestack-books.co.ukt: +44 (0) 1642 813997
PO Box 408
Middlesbrough
TS5 6WA
United Kingdom