We are celebrating our 10th Anniversary by exploring our back catalogue and inviting you to do likewise with special offers on books celebrating their anniversaries in each month.
So for FEBRUARY we have a voucher, ARA10FEB, to get 50% off the following books
Foraging
With Paper for Feet
the first few books are poetry, the last is an epic lesbian fantasy novel.
The Significance of a Dress by Emma Lee – a book that didn’t really get its moment in the sun, being published just as we went into lockdown, explores feminism and the refugee experience in sharp, effective poems.
In Retail by Jeremy Dixon tiny poems originally written on the back of till receipts behind the counter of a high street pharmacy.
Foraging by Joy Howard poems of natures and bereavement
With Paper for Feet by Jennifer A McGowan takes on Shakespeare’s women, witches, and folk tales from around the world, served up in witty pithy angy poems.
The Dowry Blade by Cherry Potts described by another Arachne author as Game of Thrones with lesbians and without dragons.
All you need to do is use the code ARA10FEB at the checkout when you buy any or all of these books – you can only use the code once, so we encourage you to buy in bulk!
Jennifer has been published by us consistently, from a single poem in our very first poetry anthology The Other Side of Sleep, to her first full poetry pamphlet With Paper for Feet and her most recent collection, How to be a Tarot Card, (or a Teenager) which we published in October. Jennifer lives in Oxfordshire. She has been a semi-professional mime and performed in five countries as well as more traditional work as researcher, editor, and writer for a strategic management company. She has taught both at several universities, in subjects as varied as English, history, and heritage studies. Jennifer is also an historical re-enactor who disappears out of the 20th Century for weeks at a time. Jennifer was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome at age 16, and has had long covid for most of the past 2 years, and can still come up with a snappy and beguiling title for a workshop!
The root cause of our bilingual anthology, A470 Poems for the Road/ Cerddi’r Fforddwas realising there were Welsh poets writing (beautifully) in English, who weren’t confident enough in their Welsh to write poetry in their native language. If ever there was an overhang of English cultural imperialism, there it was staring me in the face, and I was outraged. You can’t get specific grants for translation into Welsh, only out of it. I was more outraged! So I decided to do something about it. So this workshop is very much in the same mode of enabling people in their goddess given right to write in their native language. My welsh is limited to Diolch (Thank You) Bore da (hello) and what I read on road signs – appropriately – and I’m very grateful to Lowri for taking it on!
Lowri is a Creative Writing graduate from MMU, nature writer, and bilingual poet for BRAG magazine. She loves the sea and spends her spare time surfing at Porth Neigwl. During the evenings she’s a cocktail bartender who enjoys drinking Margaritas with her aunt. Lowri’s poem in A470 proved very useful when I was driving up and down that very road, touring the book to bookshops and libraries – here’s why. I pretty sure she’ll be great company for the workshop!
Week 2 of the festival, continuing our author-led readings discussions and workshops, and this week we have online events on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday afternoon and evening.
Fri 13/01/2023
7.30pm Three Takes on Place
readings and discussion from
Diana Powell, Melissa Davies & Sherry Morris
free/donation details and tickets
Saturday 14/01/2023
11:00-13:00 Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret workshop
Elizabeth Hopkinson
£8 details and tickets
and at 3pm
Joy//us – LGBTQ poetry reading, open mic and discussion
Jeremy Dixon, Rick Dove & Cherry Potts
free/donation details and tickets
Sunday 15/01/2023
11:00-12:30/13:00 14 great pickup lines, a poets guide to sonnets workshop
with Jennifer A McGowan
£10 details and tickets
and at 3pm Barddoniaeth Cymraeg Gweithdy Cyfieuthu/Welsh poetry translation workshop
with Lowri Williams
participatory workshop on translating Welsh poetry into English
Nod y gweithdy hon yw cyfieuthu cerdd Cymraeg i fewn i’r Saesneg, drwy trafodaeth/cyfieuthu mewn steil grwp
pay what you can £3/5/8 details and tickets
To celebrate our tenth anniversary we are having an online festival throughout January 2023, mostly weekends and Thursdays, although a couple of Tuesdays and Fridays have snuck in.
We invited our authors and friends to run the events they wanted to see, to set their own prices and number of tickets. It’s quite an eclectic mix, readings, discussions and workshops for writers, and about writing, or the business of being a writer. We invite you to join us! Visit the Eventbrite Collection
Saturday 14/01/2023 15:00 reading/open mic/discussion Jeremy Dixon & Cherry Potts Joy//Us LGBTQ Poetry
40 places free/donation
including 10 open mic spots of 3 mins each – max 2 poems! details and tickets
Sunday 15/01/2023 15:00-16:30 Lowri Williams Translating poetry from Welsh into English (workshop)
suitable for advanced learners of Welsh and native speakers.
10 places – pay what you can £3/£5/£8 details and tickets
Tuesday 24/01/23 18:00-19:30 The Business of writing– The Society of Authors This is very kindly being run for us by two of the coordinators of the Society of Authors Poetry & Spoken Word group: Johanna Clarke and Mathilde Zeeman
Thursday 26/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Nikita Chadha The Empire Writes Back: “Space, place and belonging” Interactive lecture/workshop
15 places £10 details and tickets
Friday 27/01/2023 18:30-20:00 Seni Seneviratne Using family history/photos as inspiration for poetry (workshop)
20 places £12-£20 details and tickets
Sunday 29/01/2023 11:00-13:00 discussion/reading Clare Owen Cormorants and #cornishgothic: creative ways to write about YA mental health.
15 places £5 details and tickets
Sunday 29/01/2023 15:00-16:30 workshop Saira Aspinall Marketing on a tight budget for writers
12 places £10 details and tickets
Here’s a couple of photos and recordings to give a flavour of the evening.
Oxford Poetry Library Launch
Jennifer A McGowan
Introduction
How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager)
Jennifer is launching again in London on 1st November at Keats House with Anna Fodorova, our other October author, with her novel, In the Blood. Free, cake, soft drink etc as usual! Get your tickets
And will be taking part in an online event with our friends In Words on 29th November. To register for this one you need to contact irena(at)in-words(dot)co(dot)uk and she will send you the link in good time.
25/10/2022 7pm Launch of In the Blood in discussion with writer and literary critic Jude Cook, with readings by actor Lisa Rose at the Embassy of the Czech Republic. Hosted by British Czech and Slovak Association, the Czech Embassy, the Czech Centre London and Lutyens & Rubinstein bookshop. [tickets £10]
01/11/2022 6.30pm a joint event at Keats House for How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager) and In the Blood with readings from actor Carrie Cohen free tickets
24/11/2022 6.30pm at Keats House Launch for Routes by Rhiya Pau.
29/11/2022 7.30pmIn Words are helping us celebrate our 10th Anniversary and the launch of Routes by Rhiya Pau, with an online showcase of 4 of our recent poetry books: Routes, How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager), A Pocketful of Chalk and Paper Crusade.This will be on Zoom. To access, contact In Words.
Reviewers and Bookshops… we will be in touch shortly to offer you one or more of the following Advance reader copies. If you know you are not on our list and are interested, give us a shout. These are like gold dust, so first come first served!
Following hot on the heels of National Poetry Day, Arachne Press is delighted to announce we will be at Gloucester Poetry Festival later this month with a number of the poets we have published over the last 9 years. Join us for our showcase online to hear these poets read from their work, and a brief Q&A afterwards. Readings from (in order of appearance):
The event is free, but ticketed. You can register here. If you can only use a voice line to dial in, please see the Gloucester Poetry Festival page for this event (scroll to the bottom of the page), here.
to celebrate we have bundles of 3 books by the authors available until just after the event – take a look
Our final video for Arachneversary, Jennifer A McGowan talks about her poetry collection With Paper for Feet – covering Shakespeare, myth and fairytales, 16th century witchcraft and much more, with readings.