Salt is about to begin the next leg of a remarkable journey. From Perth, via Great Wilbraham and Fulbourn, the office will shortly be relocating to the Norfolk coastal town of Cromer. This move promises a refreshing breath of North Sea air for Chris and Jen. Unfortunately, they will be leaving [...]]]>

Salt is about to begin the next leg of a remarkable journey. From Perth, via Great Wilbraham and Fulbourn, the office will shortly be relocating to the Norfolk coastal town of Cromer. This move promises a refreshing breath of North Sea air for Chris and Jen. Unfortunately, they will be leaving behind their two longest-serving employees, us! – Lee and Sarah-Jayne.

As we wind down and get ready to hand over outstanding work, we thought we would reflect on our lives at Salt. It seems so long ago when there were four of us beavering away, coming up with sales ideas. The office seems to have grown gradually quieter. And of course, since we became the two remaining in-house employees, it seems our responsibilities diversified. Over the last year we have both experienced the struggles and rewards of being part of a small independent press.

We learned quickly the financial tightrope we balanced on, and Salt has been remarkable at keeping upright (with thanks to all Salt’s supporters). However, the rewards of being creatively engaged and so involved in every aspect of the business have far outweighed this.

Some of our highlights include: building up our postcard wall (above), which has given us a colourful display to turn to when our computer screens are full of dull emails or typesetting files; meeting our authors at the events we have attended – it’s always a pleasure to link a book with a face; having the opportunity to create silly videos, such as ‘Thank you for your order’. And also the many weird and wacky emails we receive on a weekly basis – the perfect way to brighten up a rainy day.

Thank you to Chris and Jen for their time and support during our employment, it’s been a great experience. Thanks to all the Salt authors, for their commitment, enthusiasm and trust in us. And of course, to everyone who buys Salt books.

We wish you all a future filled with loads of book selling (and buying) and continual growth.

Bye from Lee and Sarah-Jayne

Amy De’Ath has some upcoming readings:

LONDON – Tuesday 15th February: Salt Plus with Giles Goodland. 7.30pm. 1 Phoenix Street (just off Charing Cross Road) London

BRIGHTON – Thursday 17th February: Hi! ZERO with Francesca Lisette and Jonty Tiplady. 7.30pm, The Hope, [...]]]> Here’s a quick round-up of things our author’s have been/will be getting up to:

Amy De’Ath has some upcoming readings:

LONDON – Tuesday 15th February: Salt Plus with Giles Goodland. 7.30pm. 1 Phoenix Street (just off Charing Cross Road) London

BRIGHTON – Thursday 17th February: Hi! ZERO with Francesca Lisette and Jonty Tiplady. 7.30pm, The Hope, Queen Street, Brighton.

OXFORD – Thursday 24th February: Albion Beatnik Bookshop, with Sean Bonney, Dominic Lash, and David Stent. Details TBC.

LONDON – Saturday 26th February: The Shuffle at the Poetry Cafe, 7.30pm, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9BX

LONDON – Saturday 12th March:  RUNNYMEDE INTERNATIONAL LITERARY FESTIVAL,  Royal Holloway University, Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, Kings Cross WC1X 9NG.

For more information see her website: http://amydeath.wordpress.com

T. Zachary Cotler (House with a Dark Sky Roof forthcoming next month) has launched The Winter Anthology:

The Winter Anthology is a collection of 21st century literature, American and international. Volume One can be read at www.winteranthology.com and includes contributions from Yves Bonnefoy, Jack Gilbert, Vuyelwa Carlin, Charles Wright, and others. The project is a vehicle for writings that privilege density, precision, earnestness, unapologetically demonstrated intellect, and sensitivity to the numinous. Various strands of late 20th century thought have done much to problematize these values, but the writings collected in The Winter Anthology are neither sentimental atavisms nor naive attempts at reconstruction. Rather, they are elegies for art and artists, some explicit, many more implicit, conscious of the technological and social forces at work for good and ill in the 21st century.

That’s it for now.

Pinckney Benedict’s collection of short stories Miracle Boy has arrived in the office. Here’s a bit about it:

Miracle Boy and Other Stories Pinckney Benedict ISBN 9781907773006

A new volume of fourteen short stories from the highly-regarded author of Town Smokes andThe Wrecking [...]]]>

Pinckney Benedict’s collection of short stories Miracle Boy has arrived in the office. Here’s a bit about it:

Miracle Boy and Other Stories Pinckney Benedict
ISBN 9781907773006

A new volume of fourteen short stories from the highly-regarded author of Town Smokes andThe Wrecking Yard. All of Benedict’s considerable talents are on show: the perfectly-captured Southern rural backdrops along with the often bizarre intensities of small town life. This new collection bristles with portraits of the grotesque, the ignorant, the disconsolate, the cruel and the lonely, and all of them heading to those singular incidents in which we find recognition, epiphany and, sometimes, compassion.

Click here to buy it from our online store for just £7.19

The New North is unique in offering a view of a new writing [...]]]> Miracle Boy and Other Stories by Pinckney Benedict

Benedict’s writing has been described as a latter-day Chaucer-meets-Gogol-meets-Donne-meets-Ray-Bradbury. These are rough-and-tumble stories, modulating between love and violence, beauty and abject terror.

The New North edited by Chris Agee

The New North is unique in offering a view of a new writing from Northern Ireland — uncovering the extraordinary talents and diverse cultural and social concerns of a new and vital generation of writers.

Land of the Flibbertigibbets by John Foster

Everything you would want from a children’s poetry book – witty wordplay and catchy chants, nonsensical nursery rhymes and cautionary tales, poems about football, dragons, dinosaurs and Dracula – a feast of poems to laugh at, to puzzle over and to ponder.

Here Comes the Poetry Man by Fred Sedgwick

Here Comes the Poetry Man shows a passion for playing with words: how many rhymes are there for the last part of Eloise’s name? How many names can you get into one poem? What are your favourite words? Can you write a poem about a beloved cat using a blues structure?

I Sing of Bricks by Angela Topping

Angela Topping’s poems are full of joy, tempered by sadness and always unflinchingly honest. She writes in a range of voices, always concentrating on the human experience, sometimes through unusual routes, like bricks, shoes, a single glove.

Simon Armitage by Ian Gregson

Simon Armitage is one of the most compelling figures in contemporary literature, most conspicuously because of his charismatic style, but also because he has brought into poetry an irreverent, streetwise gusto and a kind of knowledge that often seems to come from outside poetry altogether. This book discusses the key themes and influences of this prominent British poet. Ranging from geography to gender and his recent ecological turn.

The Bridges by Fayad Jamís, translated by Katherine M. Hedeen & Victor Rodríguez Núñez

Available for the first time in English, The Bridges by Fayad Jamís (1930-1988) is unanimously considered one of Cuban poetry’s most stunning and engaging books. The collection, written in Paris between 1956 and 1957, and published in Havana in 1962, offers one of the most brilliant representations of the intellectual and his position before colonialism to be found in Spanish-language poetry.

Reasons for Writing Poetry by Eduardo Chirinos, translated by Katherine M. Hedeen & Victor Rodríguez Núñez

Reasons for Writing Poetry is the first collection of verse to appear in English from the internationally acclaimed Peruvian poet Eduardo Chirinos (Lima, 1960). The present volume charts the growth of a poet whose fondness for masks is manifest in the frequently dialogic, even polyvocal discourse of his work. Chirinos’s poetry is marked by a wry tone and simple lyric eloquence. Accessible, ironic, and always entertaining.

Horse Whispering in the Military Industrial Complex by Philip Wells *NEW PAPERBACK EDITION*

Horse Whispering is the introduction to a poetic renaissance – it rocks the boat of poetry and yet rocks the cradle of song like a forgotten lullaby. Itsrevelatory, musical language is accessible and challenging, wild and formal, energetic and sensitive, radical and traditional, as old as the hills and as new as tomorrow.

The Collage Poems of Drafts by Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Rachel Blau DuPlessis has, to cite Walter Benjamin, “an edgy attraction to history’s material residues.” This has been one motivation of Drafts as a decade-long project, and it is a central motivation for The Collage Poems of Drafts. This book consists of two sequenced mixed-media works for reading and looking that move back and forth across the porous border between language and image.

Well, today’s my last day in the office this year. Production is up to date, and, dare I say it, ahead of schedule in a number of cases.

2010 has been a year of transition for Salt. Our tenth anniversary celebrations have played host to a number of important changes behind [...]]]>

Well, today’s my last day in the office this year. Production is up to date, and, dare I say it, ahead of schedule in a number of cases.

2010 has been a year of transition for Salt. Our tenth anniversary celebrations have played host to a number of important changes behind the scenes: a new production workflow to offer greater advance notification, the planning of major changes to the website and online shop, a greater focus on trade sales, and two new imprints – Embrace and Proxima. Our core team of Chris, Jen, Sarah-Jayne and myself, and all of our editors, have worked extremely hard to put these transitions into place. Let’s hope 2011 will see the successful realisation of these changes.

Anyway, enough of that. Here are my highlights of 2010:

Arts Council funding

Without this grant from the Arts Council, Salt most likely wouldn’t have survived this year. The one-year-only sum was awarded to help us establish our new production workflow and technical upgrades. It’s enabled us the capacity to produce all 95 new titles and editions this year (a truly huge workload). We’re now set for the challenge of being self-sustainable in 2011, a great achievement in this bleak economic climate.

Salt Modern Voices

I’m proud to have been the first poet published in this series of innovative pamphlets, and it’s been a pleasure to work with all the poets of the six following books. As an emerging writer, I appreciate the support and opportunities that this pamphlet series provides, and I hope all of the Modern Voices poets go on to write many successful collections in the future.

Launching Salt Scotland

In May, Chris, Jen and I headed up to Edinburgh to celebrate Salt Scotland. A host of our Scottish-based authors took part in an enjoyable afternoon at the Scottish Poetry Library. There was plenty of singing and merriment, and a chance for everyone to ask…. ‘what exactly is Salt Scotland?’. Watch the video to find out:

The Crashaw Prize

This really has been a year-long project for me. From the announcement of the winners early in the year, to the launch in November, I’ve enjoyed every aspect of working with our six poets and their Crashaw-winning debut collections. Here’s a video of the launch:

The postcard wall

Sarah-Jayne and I have been saving postcards sent to us this year. The best ones make it on to the office wall (along with our sales chart). Keep sending them in, we want to fill the entire wall.

There have been many other highlights this year, and the (too) occasional moment of impending disaster. July, most notably, was a constant battle to save and generate cash in order to secure our jobs… we managed it with merely a week to spare. We’re by no means safe, but what we’ve achieved this year has given us positivity and the ability to plan for the coming years.

Here’s to a well-deserved break, and a successful 2011.

Merry Christmas,

Lee

Ryan discussed his dream poet/musician collaboration, amongst other things, whilst preparing to read at the Crashaw Prize launch at the Phoenix Artist Club  watch the video

What to your ear and eye [...]]]> Here’s a taster of how Ryan’s Virtual Book Tour has been progressing:

12 November: leesmithwriter.com

Ryan discussed his dream poet/musician collaboration, amongst other things, whilst preparing to read at the Crashaw Prize launch at the Phoenix Artist Club  watch the video

14 November: Our sweet old etcetera…

What to your ear and eye is the finest poem ever written?

That is a totally insane question. The finest poem ever written is …   read more

16 November: Global Poetry System:

One of the pieces you’ve uploaded to GPS shows an extract from Wendell Berry’s poem “How to be a poet”. Why does this poem resonate with you?

Berry reminds himself of the simple things. Like …  read more

18 November: Rob A. Mackenzie’s Surroundings blog

‘I’ and ‘we’ feature in many of your poems. Would you class yourself as a confessional poet? Or at least in the general line of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Sharon Olds?

No, I don’t think I would, though I at times… read more

20 November: Robin Grey

When did the words start?

Grey, I like that question, it is something I don’t think about often enough. The words started when …   read more

24 November: Scottish Book Trust

What book do you wish you had written?

There are many. Recently, I wished I wrote … read more

26 November: Flotsam

How do you feel about the ‘homes’ of your poems? And are your poems an instrument of creating/ destroying places?

Home, an excellent starting point! I think the end of that poem is…   read more

Still to come:

Tomorrow, We Will Live Here can be bought from our online store for £7.99 with FREE shipping.

Last night Chris and I took ourselves down to the Phoenix Artist Club in London to celebrate the winners of the Crashaw and Scott prizes. Andrew Pidoux, Nick Potamitis, Susannah Rickards, Jonty Tiplady, Ryan Van Winkle and Anna [...]]]> Salt celebrates the winners of the Crashaw and Scott Prizes at the Phoenix Artist Club

Last night Chris and I took ourselves down to the Phoenix Artist Club in London to celebrate the winners of the Crashaw and Scott prizes. Andrew Pidoux, Nick Potamitis, Susannah Rickards, Jonty Tiplady, Ryan Van Winkle and Anna Woodford all performed to a packed room of appreciative guests. It was such a relaxed and inviting event, and the perfect way to launch these stunning debut collections. Both Chris and I took great pleasure in meeting the authors, and it was the perfect opportunity for them to introduce themselves to each other. We’ve got high hopes for these books. Take a look at them here:

The tour includes stops in Edinburgh, London, the US and Australia. Ryan’s already featured on [...]]]>

Ryan Van Winkle is packing his virtual suitcase, travel pillow and all, ready to depart on his first ever blog tour. It’s all in order to promote his Crashaw Prize winning debut collection, Tomorrow, We Will Live Here.

The tour includes stops in Edinburgh, London, the US and Australia. Ryan’s already featured on Melbourne’s Emerging Writers’ Festival 15 Minutes of Fame (whilst in Syria)… view the transcript of his twitter interview here.

Now, kicking off on Friday, he’ll be answering questions from some expert blog people. Here are the venues and dates: