HESTERGLOCK PRESS

Oct 26: London Small Publishers Bookfair, Conway Hall, London  1.00pm — Steven J Fowler and Writers Kingston. Launches for The Parts of the Body that Stink (paperback) Hesterglock Press and frog circles paper view books. Short readings from students and alumni Danica Ignacio and Cameron Wade.

The thing that stinks the most … is you!

Or this book. Who cares? That’s not what this is about at all. You stink, I stink, everything worthwhile stinks. Smell it while you can. This is an eccentric poetry book by most standards, divided into five chapters, each a long poem. Nose, pits, feet, anas, genitae. All about how we smell and what that might worry in us. For example let’s not get obsessed with what we’ll smell of in the grave! After all, you smell right now. Let’s just read, and for one day, not give ourselves a scrubbing.

£8.00
Buy a copy at the launch. Or buy a copy here . . .

What I’d like to mention is the nature of working with the press, Hesterglock. Paul Hawkins has published two of my previous books and our relationship over the years has been the ideal for a publisher editor as collaborator and encourager. Hesterglock’s work has been important, offering books that are genuinely unpredictable and exciting, and from poets all over the world, as well as many making their debuts. I would say, such is the specific culture Hesterglock has built – such is the distinct taste of the list, in all its wideness – that it is doing something truly different, and that wouldn’t exist without it. Perhaps this is most obviously felt in it’s embrace of poem brut poetry – that is work that is handmade, physical, messy, that harks back to the post-war brutalist, cobra and the like, but actually comes from a different place. It comes from a particular kind of weird, playful, aggravated English experience. Something that touches on class, sometimes, and social alienation, sometimes, but in a particularly English way, turns this into an eccentricity that verges on volatility, but stays in play. It’s immediate, colourful, complex, energised. It is this that has made Hesterglock a place I feel at home, and Paul has been instrumental in helping me shape the www.poembrut.com movement (others have called it that, not me), along with Julia Rose Lewis and many others.

I believe it’s a moment where Paul and Hesterglock are taking a little time to wind back but remain, to recharge and lie fallow, but in that there is a moment for the many many poets who have benefitted from the press’ selfless championing to celebrate what has been done, and what will be done. I’m glad my time in British poetry has coincided with Hesterglock.

SJ Fowler on Hesterglock Press





Hesterglock editor Paul Hawkins publishes the On The Brink (zine edition) on Sept 15. Limited to 12 print copies, this zine also marks the release of the On The Brink album on Sept 7. Both released by Eachwhat Industries. Link below . . .









































On Saturday June 22 Sarer Scotthorne launched her new pamphlet Suggested Breathing with an event at 25 Wathen Road, Bristol BS6 5BY from 15:00. There was tea, coffee, poetry, performances, readings, books for sale, flowers, cats, bubbly, popcorn & some martial arts.

Buy a copy direct from Sarer, contact her here