We’ve had 2 launches for Paper Crusade this week, first on line, on Wednesday, then at Keats House yesterday.
We’ve recorded everything, and will be sharing as we get it edited and captioned.
Here poet Michelle Penn and editor Cherry Potts talk about the inspirations themes, characters, processes and decisions that went into the making of the book.
Thanks to Keats House for making us so welcome!
you can buy the book in print from our webshop (we are temporarily out of office stock – thank you lovely people who bought so many copies – but will have more by the end of next week, or can get them sent direct from the warehouse)
We have a few events planned for the launch of Michelle Penn’s book-length poem, Paper Crusade, starting on publication day…
Tuesday 21st June 2022 10:30(ish) an experimental (ie we don’t know if it will work) live zoom to our Facebook pageEnchanted Island Books. Michelle will talk about which six books she would save if she was shipwrecked on her island. We will record as well, just in case.
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 19:00 online launch with readings, Q&A, chat and optional audience participation involving Shakespearean insults and Haiku, get tickets
Friday 24th June 2022 18:45 for 19:00 in person Launch at Keats House Library 10 Keats Grove NW3 2RR There will be readings, discussion and cake (very bad for you, anyone whose been to a launch before, you know, everyone else you’ve been warned.) get tickets
As part of the run up to our celebration of our fifth anniversary we are highlighting our first five books, all available for £5 each from our shop
Also available to bona fide libraries and book charities free please contact us to enquire.
Number Three: Lovers’ Lies
Designed expressly for romantic cynics and cynical romantics. Liars’ League teamed up with Arachne Press for a second outing bringing the freshness, wit, imagination and passion of their authors to a wider audience.
Join us as we wallow in the many facets of relationships. Explore role-play gone wrong, goldfish that eat loneliness, and a very literal leap into the unknown. Old love, cold love, true love, new love, dead love, we’re through love – making babies and making whoopee, disappointment and contentment, playing at home, playing away or just playing; missed chances and new romances: everything from first conversation to last breath, strange journeys and stranger destinations.
Be careful who catches you reading it – your intentions might be misinterpreted.
… the anthology isn’t slavishly devoted to its theme; it has the freedom to take off on tangents and flights of fancy. Love is treated as a springboard rather than an anchor to hold the anthology in place.
…
The final, redemptive twist of Jason Jackson’s ‘A Time and Place Unknown’, the last, sci-fi, entry in Lovers’ Lies, leaves the anthology with a final note of optimism. It ends by letting us believe that love is a force for good and that it can overcome time, space and perhaps even death itself.
Over the course of its 138 pages Lovers’ Lies shows both the darker side of love and the way it brings out the best in us. If that was the intention of the Arachne Press editors, then they’ve done a fine job.
eating cake at the meet the author event at Daunts Hampstead
Lop-sided Liars’ Cake
When we were looking for somewhere to launch this, we said we need the most romantic place in London… what about Keats House? Oh, they’ll never let us… but they did!
Speaking of designs, the cover (by Annie Rickard Straus) was the result of a massive competition with public and authors voting – they didn’t agree, so the authors won.
Here are snippets of just a couple of minutes long from some of the Other Side of Sleep poems read at Keats House last month. All beautifully rendered by the poets, Sarah Lawson, Revenant; Cherry Potts; Thirty-second Mariner; Math Jones, Grithspell; Bernie Howley, I Have no Feet; Jennifer A McGowan, Troy: Seven Voices and Alwyn Marriage: Naming: AD 2006
Scents and smells for character, atmosphere and inspiration
…what soft incense
(Keats)
Explore writing using all the senses, but particularly smell, with Cherry Potts, author of Mosaic of Air and Tales Told Before Cockcrow, editor of London Lies, Stations and Lovers’ Lies and owner of Arachne Press.
Bring a large notebook and lots of pens, and expect to write. Weather permitting a stroll about the garden may be included. If you have a scent that means a lot to you, (and it is portable) bring it with you!
Suitable for all levels of experience, and for fiction writers and poets.
We have a few events planned for the launch of 
