One for Sorrow, Two for Joy

What do magpies have to do with LGBTQ+ poetry?

cover reveal…

Image by Frank Duffy, Design Jeremy Dixon

We are now in a position to announce the lineup for Joy//Us: Poems of Queer Joy, which we are publishing to coincide with International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) on 17th May 2024.

It’s been a long process, starting in January last year with our first announcement and discussion of what we were looking for, followed by workshops and submissions, shortlisting and then a weekend of shifting printouts about on the big table, making the anthology as joyful and queer as we can.

Trumpets!!

our poets are…

Abhi
Alexander Williams
Annie Kerr
Aoife Mannix
Becky Brookfield
Cherry Potts
Conway Emmett
Dean Atta
Desree
Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell
Elizabeth Gibson
Garnett ‘Ratte’ Frost
Helen Bowie
Jane Aldous
Jeremy Dixon
John McCullough
Joshua Linney
Joshua Jones
Joy Howard
JP Seabright
K. Angel
Kate Foley
Khakan Qureshi, BEM
Laurie B.
Lawrence Wilson
Lydia Fulleylove
Maria Jastrzębska
Mwelwa Chilekwa
P Burton-Morgan
Rab Green
Rick Dove
Robert Hamberger
Sophia Blackwell
Steph Morris
Tanya Erin Sheehan
Tom McLaughlin
Vron McIntyre
Zo Copeland

We are thrilled and proud to be working with these wonderful writers, and have lots of events in the planning. We are going to have to crowdfund to achieve those events, as we didn’t get ACE funding and we don’t expect people to travel far, for no recompense. That’s for the new year, in the meantime, you can help by getting your order in early, so we know how many to print. The bigger the initial order, the cheaper the unit cost and the more there is left to get out and about with this wonderful book.

About Queer Joy… a short video

Co-editor Jeremy Dixon introduces the submission call for Joy//Us, our anthology of poetry celebrating queer joy, and reads a couple of poems that fit the theme, with a short follow up from Cherry Potts about what she is (and isn’t) looking for. If you are thinking of submitting please do so via Submittable before 11th October, and you are welcome to join our free workshops on line in September. Please spread the word!

Q&A from online launch of More Patina than Gleam & Saved to Cloud

Queer poet Jeremy Dixon quizzes fellow Arachne poets, Kate Foley and Jane Aldous for the online launch of their new poetry collections, Saved to Cloud, and More Patina Than Gleam, on process, inspiration, being ‘vintage lesbians’ and what their mothers would have thought.

 

Are you an LGBTQ+ poet? Inspired by our gang of queer poets?

We have a submission call for Joy//Us, our LGBTQ+ poetry of Queer Joy anthology right… here on Submittable

Edinburgh explored in poetry part 2

Jane Aldous‘s latest poetry collection, More Patina than Gleam, is a strange book – it tells interlinking love stories set in Jane’s home town of Edinburgh, and was inspired by Jane’s 70th birthday, and something her mother said when Jane was a child.

The 70th birthday link was to write 70 poems – sonnets, but Jane’s mother’s input was to say that she often thought she should have run away from her marriage when she was young, and take Jane with her.

From this Jane creates the story of Linda, a runaway, and her daughter, Ange, arriving in Edinburgh from England in the early 60’s to become Lady’s Companion to Elsie,

an elderly, refined woman in a house that is held together by will-power and love – more patina than gleam.

When Jane talks about the book, one of the loves she never mentions is her own – for Edinburgh. Her love of the place shines out from every page, and I suspect she’s never noticed it, so ingrained it is.

Some of the places she talks about in the poems are long gone, or wilt behind hoardings, but on the afternoon of Thursday 10th August, Jane is taking people on a poetry walk around some of the locations that feature in the poems, the Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill and Pond, Observatory Road, finishing with tea at West Mains Allotments…

A novel way to experience a book!

Tickets (free, or you can pre-order a book to pick up on the day, or have it sent to you) via eventbrite

 

 

Edinburgh explored in poetry

Jane Aldous‘s latest poetry collection, More Patina than Gleam, is a strange book – it tells interlinking love stories set in Jane’s home town of Edinburgh, and was inspired by Jane’s 70th birthday, and something her mother said when Jane was a child.

The 70th birthday link was to write 70 poems – sonnets, but Jane’s mother’s input was to say that she often thought she should have run away from her marriage when she was young, and take Jane with her.

From this Jane creates the story of Linda, a runaway, and her daughter, Ange, arriving in Edinburgh from England in the early 60’s to become Lady’s Companion to Elsie,

an elderly, refined woman in a house that is held together by willpower and love – more patina than gleam.

When Jane talks about the book, one of the loves she never mentions is her own – for Edinburgh. Her love of the place shines out from every page, and I suspect she’s never noticed it, so ingrained it is.

Some of the places she talks about in the poems are long gone, or wilt behind hoardings, but over the next few weeks Jane is taking people on poetry walks around some of the locations that feature in the poems, the Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill and Pond, Observatory Road, finishing with tea at West Mains Allotments…

A novel way to experience a book!

Tickets (free, or you can pre-order a book to pick up on the day, or have it sent to you) via eventbrite

 

 

Get your JOY on at Juno Books

We are well into our tour of workshops for LGBTQ+ poets, with events already held in Liverpool, Edinburgh and London.

Jeremy Dixon

Next up, SHEFFIELD July 6th, 6.30pm.

Join co-editor for JOY//US and winner of the Wales Book of the Year English Language Poetry award 2022, Jeremy Dixon, for a short reading to get you in the mood, followed by a workshop of Writing Queer Joy. Produce a first draft of a poem, and take it away to polish it up, and maybe, submit!

Free tickets from Eventbrite please book as space is tight and we dont want to disappoint anyone on the night.  We are at the lovely Juno Books

Here’s a bit of a poem, the delightful Like My Jealousy performed (in one take) by Jeremy by the side of the A470 at Pen Y Fan.

Future dates Bristol in August, online in September, and we are making enquiries in Wales…

Independent Bookshop Week 2023

We’re really pleased to be joining forces with Brixton bookshop, Round Table Books, for a week of events in celebration of Independent Bookshop Week 2023, and of the brilliant community of independent publishers, booksellers, readers and writers in South London.

Independent Bookshop Week, which takes places from 17 – 24th June, is a Bookseller’s Association campaign, designed to celebrate and promote indy bookshops and all they do to keep the UK book trade diverse, eclectic and engaged with local communities.

We love getting know our local independent bookshops (as well as those further afield!) so we’re delighted to be hosting four events at Round Table Books during Independent Bookshop Week, showcasing recent and forthcoming Arachne Press titles. All the events are free to attend:

Sunday 18th June, 6.30pm: Writers from Arachne Press anthology, Where We Find Ourselves: Poems and Stories of Maps and Mapping from UK writers of the global majority. Nikita Chadha, Farhana Khalique, Lesley Kerr, Emily Abdeni-Holman, L Kiew and Mallika Kahn will read their own and one others’ work from the anthology, discussing what inspired their own piece and why they chose the other to share. Book now.

Monday 19th June, 6.30pm: Writing LGBTQ+ Joy with poet Jeremy Dixon. Ahead of the submission deadline for Arachne Press’ LGBTQ+ poetry anthology, Joy//Us, (October 11th) join poet and co-editor Jeremy Dixon for a workshop on writing queer joy. Suitable for all levels of poetry experience, this is an opportunity to explore the theme of queer joy, and perhaps produce a poem to submit for the anthology. Jeremy Dixon’s latest collection, A Voice Coming From Thenwon the Wales Book of the Year English language poetry category in 2022. Pre-booking essential, book now.

Tuesday 20th June, 6.30pm: Poetry reading with AJ Akoto. Debut poet AJ Akoto gives a pre-publication reading from her forthcoming poetry collection UnMothered (13 July 2023), followed by a Q and A session with Round Table Books Co-Director, Meera Ghanshamdas. Inspired by a desire to break the silence surrounding difficulties in mother-daughter relationships, UnMothered uses storytelling and myth to capture the complexity, and contradictions, that define the mother-daughter bond. Book now.

Thursday 22nd June, 8pm: poet Rhiya Pau reads from her award-winning debut collection, Routes. Exploring the routes taken by Rhiya Pau’s parents and grandparents across multiple countries to arrive in the UK, Routes lays bare the conflicts of identity that arise from being a member of the East African-Indian diaspora. Book now.

Free tickets to all the events can be reserved on Eventbrite and books will be available to buy, and get signed, at Round Table Books.

Meera Ghanshamdas of Round Table Books said:

‘We are delighted to be partnering with Arachne Press for Independent bookshop week, not only are they really local to us, but we are on very much the same page (pun deliberate) on the importance of inclusive publishing. Arachne’s focus on LGBTQ+ and disabled writers, as well as their championing of Global Majority writers, sits really well with the aims and ethos of our organisation. I’m really looking forward to meeting all the authors who will be reading or running workshops with us.’

We are really looking forward to being involved in #IndieBookshopWeek and hope to see you at one of the above events. And remember, a bookshop is for life not just Independent Bookshop Week! 

Joy//Us LGBTQ+ Poetry Anthology… Submit

Arachne Press has long been a champion of LGBTQ+ writers, but we’ve never before published an anthology of LGBTQ+ poetry. That is all about to change. The title of our forthcoming book is Joy//Us, because we want to publish your joyful poems, ones that celebrate all that is best about our community/ies and lives. This is not an ‘explain it to the straights’ book, this is for us. We want LGBTQ+ readers to be able to open the book at random and find a moment of poetic queer joy for themselves, however big or small.
Spurred on by the success of his Wales Book of the Year 2022 Poetry Award winning book, A Voice Coming From Then, we asked poet Jeremy Dixon to join Arachne Press editor Cherry Potts in editing this anthology.
This is a call for poetry by LGBTQ+ poets, for LGBTQ+ readers. If you don’t identify as being part of the LGBTQ+ community, then please do not submit. We are not looking for sexually explicit or derogatory poetry. Nor are we looking for poems about trauma or distress (we recognise it is out there and needs writing about, but this is not that book).
Send us your unpublished poems, in English (or Welsh, with a translation*). This is a UK/Republic of Ireland only call, but within that, we want to see as many submissions from poets from the global majority as want to be published by us. Send us up to 5 poems – we will consider a maximum of 3 for publication. Poems can be any length, but think first, do you really need all those words? Send us your best!
Submissions are open from 1 February 2023 (for the start of LGBT History Month) until 11 October 2023 (National Coming Out Day) and will only be accepted through Submittable.
The book will be published to coincide with IDAHOBIT on 17 May 2024.
*The poet must submit their work, not the translator, so if you have not translated your own work, the translator must give permission, and must be credited.
 

‘Oi’ on Tour

All kinds of loveliness and laughter experienced so far on the A Voice Coming From Then Tour. Here’s a quick snapshot from Brecon Carmarthen and Cardiff

Join Jeremy next Thursday 5.45 at Cardiff Library for more…

[There’s an annoying flicker on the Brecon video, I’ve cleaned it up as best I can, and set that part to B&W as it’s less trying, but it’s the sound that’s the joy in this so… you could always shut your eyes…]

Thanks to our lovely audiences, and our hosts, The Hours, Brecon; Waterstones, Carmarthen; and Waterstones, Cardiff.

 

Happy Birthday, A Voice Coming From Then!

Today is exactly one year since we published A Voice Coming From Then by Jeremy Dixon. Largely written and edited during lockdown, A Voice Coming From Then recently won the English-language Poetry award at the Wales Book of the Year 2022 and this has given us another chance to celebrate Jeremy and his extraordinary collection in real life.

We’re building an A Voice Coming From Then tour of Wales this Autumn, with events already planned at several libraries, independent bookshops and Waterstones stores across Wales this October and November.

If you run a bookshop, library, arts venue or poetry night, then please get in touch with us on outreach@arachnepress.com and let us know if you’d be interested in hosting an event with Jeremy Dixon as a part of this tour.

If you’re in Wales (or close by) and would like to see Jeremy reading from A Voice Coming From Then, please keep an eye on our blog and social media channels for the event dates and locations – coming soon!

For now, we are celebrating A Voice Coming From Then‘s book birthday with an online offer: buy a copy of the print book from our webshop and we’ll send you a code for 50% off the ebook or audiobook, which is beautifully narrated by Nigel Pilkington.

A Voice Coming From Then starts with Jeremy Dixon’s teenage suicide attempt and expands to encompass themes of bullying, queerphobia, acceptance and support.

As well as exploring identity, the tragic effects of bullying and the impact of suicide, this collection also includes unexpected typography, collage, humour, magic, discotheques and frequent appearances from the Victorian demon, Spring-heeled Jack.

One of the Wales Book of the Year judges commented: “I really admire Jeremy’s ability to be so vulnerable. I felt like he just really put his heart and his whole self into the collection.” Congratulations to Jeremy on having this immensely personal and moving collection out in the world for a whole year.