As part of our Arachne 5th Anniversary celebrations, we’ve asked all of our authors to come up with a blog, that might have something to do with writing or anniversaries. Some of them responded! This one is from Kate Foley who we published in The Other Side of Sleep, Liberty Tales and The Don’t Touch Garden

When Cherry first told me she was launching a new press my first (private!) reaction was….hmmmm….? How many small – or micro, as she calls it – presses are launched like massive liners every year, only to founder like a leaf on the stream of got-in-first-well-funded competitors? Good Luck! But it turned out she didn’t need luck. Her energy and commitment to finding interesting authors with a story to tell or a poem to write has led to the five-year-old toddler Arachne Press growing to a stature well beyond its years, with a list that compares with many an older, staider press.

In particular, since poetry is my bag, I am proud to be in her line-up of  vibrant and interesting poets, astonished that she used  my poem The Other Side of Sleep as title for her innovative book of (neglected) narrative poems, delighted that she has published my collection about adoption and childhood, The Don’t Touch Garden and look forward to the emergence of A Gift of Rivers in April.

That is of course after a rigorous and exhausting process of editing and the prospect of an equally wilt-making string of readings…. but hey! let me not grumble. It’s high time we poets – especially those of us who don’t have very sharp elbows and who are maybe knocking-on a bit – learned to value a publisher who cares even more about getting our work out there than sales.

So thank you Cherry and Happy Fifth Birthday Arachne.

COME to the 5th anniversary party, 8th Sept it’s free (but ticketed)  Kate is reading