The87press

24/08/2024

25th Sept, 7 - 9pm at Housmans Bookshop!
FREE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hummingbirds-30-a-literary-salon-with-karenjit-sandhu-and-kiran-bath-tickets-995099719047?aff=oddtdtcreator

Hummingbirds 3.0 brings together two writers from the Punjabi diaspora, Karenjit Sandhu and Kiran Bath (making a special visit from the US).

Karenjit Sandhu is a poet and artist. She is a Lecturer in Art at the Reading School of Art, University of Reading. Her publications include Poetic Fragments from the Irritating Archive (Guillemot Press), young girls! (the87press) and Baby 19 (intergraphia books). Her work is featured in Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry and The Blue Notebook: Journal for Artists’ Books. Her artists’ books have been collected by the Tate Archive (London) and exhibited at The Showroom (London) and Galerie éof (Paris). Sandhu’s performance work has led to collaborations with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Barbican, Flat Time House and Christie’s (London), Arnolfini (Bristol) and Galerie Eric Dupont (Paris). She is a member of the British Art Network and has written for exhibition catalogues on contemporary British, European and South Asian art.

young girls! is a debut from Panjabi-British poet and artist Karenjit Sandhu. A lyrical narrative which re-imagines the renowned modernist pioneer Amrita Sher-Gil as a 1990s West London native.

23/08/2024

"Thornton’s poems are set in a specific landscape, of the shingle coast around Dungeness in Kent, characterised by flatness, the interpenetration of water and land, and shingle’s shifting of the coastline’s definition."
John Wilkinson reviews Shapeshifting by Timothy Thornton.



on theHythe: Open Access: https://www.the87press.co.uk/thehythe-open/digital-poetics-423-on-beauty-timothy-thorntons-shapeshifting-by-john-wilkinson

This should be read alongside a review by Luke Roberts of the same book also published on theHythe: https://www.the87press.co.uk/thehythe-open/digital-poetics-417-sweat-and-stress-on-timothy-thorntons-shapeshifting-by-luke-roberts

23/08/2024

Crossing the threshold: a poetry workshop with Alycia Pirmohamed

Tuesday, September 17 · 6 - 8pm BST on Zoom
£32.99 + fees
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crossing-the-threshold-a-poetry-workshop-with-alycia-pirmohamed-tickets-999249541277?aff=oddtdtcreator

When do we sense a departure or an arrival in a poem? What thresholds – physical, metaphorical, or natural – do we cross? In this workshop, we will spend time thinking about thresholds, boundaries, and borders, exploring when we encounter points of transition in a poem's subject and form. Alongside discussion and writing exercises, we will read a variety of work including the Jason Allen-Paisant poem after which this workshop is named, and poems by Bhanu Kapil and Hannah Lavery. There will be time to share work during the session and all pre-reading materials will be sent in advance.

Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the poetry collection Another Way to Split Water. Her other works include Hinge, Faces that Fled the Wind, and the collaborative work, Second Memory, which was co-authored by Pratyusha. Her nonfiction debut A Beautiful and Vital Place won the 2023 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and is forthcoming with Canongate. Alycia currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s at the University of Cambridge. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics, and she is the recipient of several awards including a Pushcart Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

22/08/2024

Have you been eyeing up one of our titles? If you sign up to our newsletter you'll be sent a FREE SHIPPING code so you can save some money on your next order!

Link in bio or go directly to the87press.co.uk/newsletter

21/08/2024

25th Sept, 7 - 9pm at the Housmans Bookshop, London, N1 9DY

FREE, register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hummingbirds-30-a-literary-salon-with-karenjit-sandhu-and-kiran-bath-tickets-995099719047?aff=oddtdtcreator

Hummingbirds 3.0 brings together two writers from the Punjabi diaspora, Karenjit Sandhu and Kiran Bath (making a special visit from the US). In celebration of Karenjit's and Kiran's debut collections of poetry, this reading will celebrate diaspora as a space for feminist politics, intersectionality, performance on and off the page. Each poet will read and be in conversation, chaired by director of the87press, Azad Ashim Sharma.

20/08/2024

Old Worlds / New Kinships: a poetry workshop with Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Sunday, September 8 · 6 - 8pm BST on Zoom.
£32.99 + booking fees, register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-worlds-new-kinships-a-poetry-workshop-with-victoria-adukwei-bulley-tickets-995081885707?aff=oddtdtcreator

Wandering between readings of Aimé Cesaire’s Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1956) and work from Momtaza Mehri’s Bad Diaspora Poems (2023), this session explores how the poets use a blend of surrealism, reportage, humour and anti-colonial critique to throw open possibilities of kinship that transcend the histories of subjugation.

Inspired by these texts, participants will play with voice, sampling and prose poetry to produce writing that both withstands and embodies the contradictions of place and belonging in the spirit of a radical tradition.

This is part of an ongoing series of workshops with Victoria Adukwei Bulley, an award-winning poet who we continue to learn with and are inspired by. All fees from this workshop go directly to Victoria and we encourage you to receive this warm welcome by either attending or sharing with like-minded others.

15/08/2024

Old Worlds / New Kinships: a poetry workshop with Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Sunday, September 8 · 6 - 8pm BST on Zoom.
£32.99 + booking fees, register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-worlds-new-kinships-a-poetry-workshop-with-victoria-adukwei-bulley-tickets-995081885707?aff=oddtdtcreator

Wandering between readings of Aimé Cesaire’s Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1956) and work from Momtaza Mehri’s Bad Diaspora Poems (2023), this session explores how the poets use a blend of surrealism, reportage, humour and anti-colonial critique to throw open possibilities of kinship that transcend the histories of subjugation.

Inspired by these texts, participants will play with voice, sampling and prose poetry to produce writing that both withstands and embodies the contradictions of place and belonging in the spirit of a radical tradition.

This is part of an ongoing series of workshops with Victoria Adukwei Bulley, an award-winning poet who we continue to learn with and are inspired by. All fees from this workshop go directly to Victoria and we encourage you to receive this warm welcome by either attending or sharing with like-minded others.

Inspired by these texts, participants will play with voice, sampling and prose poetry to produce writing that both withstands and embodies the contradictions of place and belonging.

14/08/2024

August is Women in Translation Month!

Sea In My Bones by Juana Goergen, Translated by Silvia Tandeciarz was the Poetry Book Society's Translation Choice 2023!

Shop: https://www.the87press.co.uk/shop/p/sea-in-my-bones-juana-goergen

"In this extraordinary bilingual edition of Mar En Los Huesos, Juana Goergen and translator Silvia Tandeciarz underline the richness of collective memory and lineage through an intertextual and linguistically captivating experience. These poetic sequences unfurl across lyrically fertile landscapes, where the sea comes to metaphorically represent both body and place, as well as the braided history and mythology of the Caribbean’s ancestral past. Goergen’s poetry ‘distances and exhibits’; there is a careful witnessing and a fierce resistance in its compellingly told narratives of spirituality, colonial violence, and a deeply felt inheritance." – Alycia Pirmohamed, Another Way To Split Water

13/08/2024

🗓 SAVE THE DATES 🗓
We have a busy couple months ahead of us with workshops, in person readings, and book launches, so make sure to add them to your calendars!

More info and Eventbrite listings coming in due course.

11/08/2024

"Gorgeous and real poetry. This book is a bright spot in a bleak time." – Peter Gizzi

A True Account is a "project of crisis poetics" written between 2013 and 2020, published by a variety of small presses in the UK and the US. Here are variously refracted the student movement, austerity, general election, referendum, the crisis of 2020 or 2019 or any year you care to name; the Massacre of the Innocents, the housing question, the October Revolution in November.

Shop at the87press.co.uk/shop

09/08/2024

Have you been eyeing up one of our titles? If you sign up to our newsletter you'll be sent a FREE SHIPPING code so you can save some money on your next order!

https://www.the87press.co.uk/newsletter

08/08/2024

We're excited to be bringing MUSHAIRA to Beyond Borders International Festival in Scotland on August 25th!

the87press published poets Sarona Abuaker , Karenjit Sandhu , and Jessica Widner will perform their poetry with sonic accompaniment from Mun Sing .

The poets' debut’s all delve into the power and politics of the erotic body, expect thematics ranging from Palestinian cultural resistance, South Asian speculative histories, and ghostly interventions into love-triangles. Mun Sing will provide tailored soundscapes to bring out the hidden energies of each reading.

06/08/2024

Leo Li presents us with five poems on dichotomies and the possibilities in-between: “Behind us, / the spongiform city where I’d always thought / I belonged mouldered in silent balm.”

Read now on theHythe: Open Access
https://www.the87press.co.uk/thehythe-open/digital-poetics-421-five-poems-by-leo-li

"highway to" image by Leo Li

05/08/2024

Gareth Farmer speaks to us about his book Kerf (the87press, 2022) in a wide-ranging conversation covering his anarchic neo-modernist tendencies, developments in autism poetics, and the role of evasiveness in poetics. We also touch upon Vladimir Mayakovksy, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and poetic form.

Read now on theHythe+ for £20/year:
https://www.the87press.co.uk/thehytheplus/in-a-way-i-am-trying-to-create-a-new-subjectivity-of-autism-through-using-poetic-form-in-conversation-with-gareth-farmer

04/08/2024

COVER REVEAL!
Refugee! by award-winning theatre-maker and playwright Aisha Zia. Coming March 2025 with the87press, this is our first piece of playtext!

Aisha Zia's new play is about first generation economic and war migrants, their experience in the UK and subverting the political narrative of refugees and migrants before the next general election. It's based on interviews with people who have lived experience of the immigration system and have sought asylum from war and poverty, from colonisation and white supremacy.

03/08/2024

Kat Sinclair's poetry collection "The Pharmacy" is coming this October! Have you read her debut "Very Authentic Person" (the87press, 2019)?

Shop here: https://www.the87press.co.uk/shop/p/vap

“Very Authentic Person announces itself as a treatise on alienation: here we have spirals of self-regard and negation, all narrated by a voice that gives each object it uses or doesn’t use a shot at taking itself over. Each poem moves the self across a world of sensual particulars and geographical specificities by way of inadequate British transport infrastructure. But each journey and each dissolution of the self is made to be there for a comrade or a loved one. It’s rare to read digressive verse that has such a strong sense of rhythm and purpose. This book is a love song that can outlast the rail replacement bus journey.”
– Samuel Solomon, author of Special Subcommittee

02/08/2024

Register for free and see you tomorrow!
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the87press-housmans-bookshop-present-hummingbirds-20-a-literary-salon-tickets-932354335917?aff=oddtdtcreator

We'll be at August 3rd 7 - 9:30pm featuring Edgar Garcia, John Wilkinson, and Calliope Michail, with a discussion chaired by our own Azad Ashim Sharma!

01/08/2024

COVER REVEAL! Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali, coming January 2025 with the87press

In Theophanies, award-winning poet Sarah Ghazal Ali testifies to women's capacity for piercing and musical exegesis and asks: what more might a woman’s body hold after it has been hailed as a vessel for the divine? Braiding the scriptures of the Qur’an and Bible, Theophanies interlaces the spectacles of gender, faith, and family and unravels the age-old idea that seeing is believing. Drawing from art and music, Pakistani history, and cultural inheritance, these poems speak back against eons to the matriarchs of the Abrahamic faiths, the mothers at the heart of sacred history.

"In this expansive debut collection, Ali draws from the Quran and the Bible as vehicles for a deeper consideration of the intersections of family, gender, and faith. … These powerful, resonant poems herald an exciting new voice."
— Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"Ali's is one of the most sure-footed debuts I've had the pleasure to encounter in many years. Wrought with precision, control, and an astute humility before the wondrous, the profound and profane, these poems feel crafted from the sum total of history, then realized at the crest of the poet's matrix of experiences. A truly fearless and tender gem of a collection."
— Ocean Vuong

29/07/2024

THIS SATURDAY!! Poetry, conversation, and good vibes.
Tickets are free with registration, link in bio!

Join us for our second edition of Hummingbirds literary salon, this time at Housmans Bookshop on August 3rd 7 - 9:30pm featuring Edgar Garcia , John Wilkinson , and Calliope Michail; with a discussion chaired by Azad Ashim Sharma.

25/07/2024

We're releasing Karenjit Sandhu's second (and second with us!) books in March 2025. Do you have a copy of her debut?
https://www.the87press.co.uk/shop/p/young-girls-karenjit-sandhu-2021

young girls! by Karenjit Sandhu

A debut from Panjabi-British poet and artist Karenjit Sandhu. A lyrical narrative which re-imagines the renowned modernist pioneer Amrita Sher-Gil as a 1990s West London native.

From ‘sweet sobs’ to ‘the reservoir of sadness’ a vivacious energy animates this debut collection of poems; young girls! circles back to those fleeting moments ofrebellious girlhood with verve and humour.
– Mona Arshi, author of small hands and somebody loves you

24/07/2024

Calliope Michail will be reading at our second edition of Hummingbirds literary salon at Housmans Bookshop on August 3rd 7 - 9:30pm!

Free entry with registration at the link in bio! Limited spots left!

Calliope Michail is a London based poet and translator. Poems, collages, watercolour erasures, translations, etc., have appeared in various publications including Snow Lit Rev, Penteract Press, The Hythe, Datableed, Pamenar Press, Lumin and Prototype. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Along Mosaic Roads (the87press, 2018). She enjoys collaborating with other poets and artists, often for performances at the European Poetry Festival and Camarade series. In the fall, she will start working on a PhD on the poet Iliassa Sequin.

23/07/2024

COVER REVEAL!
"The Voice of Sheila Chandra" by Kazim Ali, coming November 2024!

Titled for the influential singer left almost voiceless by a terrible syndrome, the poems bring sweet melodies and rhythms as the voices blend and become multitudinous. There's an honouring of not only survival, but of persistence, as this part research-based, pensive collection contemplates what it takes to move forward when the unimaginable holds you back.

22/07/2024

Environmentalism is one the87press' investment principles and we try to advocate for climate responsibility in all of our work.
We print all of our books through the CPI Group, who are fully committed to continual improvement on the environmental impact of its business activities.

21/07/2024

John Wilkinson is joining us for a reading at our second edition of Hummingbirds literary salon at Housmans Bookshop on August 3rd 7 - 9:30pm!
Free entry with registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the87press-housmans-bookshop-present-hummingbirds-20-a-literary-salon-tickets-932354335917?aff=oddtdtcreator

John Wilkinson’s most recent books are the poem clusters Wood Circle (The Last Books 2021) and Fugue State (Shearsman 2023). His absentee memoir Colours Nailed to the Mast was published by Shearsman in 2023. An emeritus professor in the Department of English, University of Chicago, he now lives in Cambridge.

20/07/2024

COVER REVEAL
“OSSIA” by Jimin Seo , launching with us in November 2024!

In this extraordinary, passionate debut poetry collection, Jimin Seo takes up a material we think we recognize – language – and transforms it through permutation, history, and translation into a lyrical and alien terrain. Seo takes up both Korean and English, drawing them across multiple experiences of relation – none of them equivalence. Translation and re-translation triangulate to form the ghostly third other which defines every relationship of two. Fragmentation, riff, homophony, and analogy sprawl like cuttings from a plant, yielding poems that grow in defiant new directions. This is a book calling to a mother, a teacher, lovers, and ultimately a self whose elements materialise through language, even as the speaker laments what language cannot be or hold.

19/07/2024

Coming soon: the newest of the esteemed lecture series and part three of Marx and the Climate Crisis: Marx and Climate Change.

18/07/2024

We're so pleased to have Edgar Garcia visiting the UK and joining us for a reading at our second edition of Hummingbirds literary salon at Housmans Bookshop on August 3rd 7 - 9:30pm!

Free entry with registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the87press-housmans-bookshop-present-hummingbirds-20-a-literary-salon-tickets-932354335917?aff=oddtdtcreator

Edgar Garcia is a poet and scholar of the hemispheric cultures of the Americas. He is the author of Skins of Columbus: A Dream Ethnography (Fence Books, 2019), Signs of the Americas: A Poetics of Pictography, Hieroglyphs, and Khipu (University of Chicago Press, 2020), and Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2022). He is associate professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.

This iteration will feature Edgar Garcia , John Wilkinson , and Calliope Michail; with a discussion chaired by Azad Ashim Sharma.

16/07/2024

Did you know Along Mosaic Roads by Calliope Michail is the first poetry collection we ever published?

Calliope will be joining us at on August 3rd alongside Edgar Garcia and John Wilkinson! Free entry: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the87press-housmans-bookshop-present-hummingbirds-20-a-literary-salon-tickets-932354335917?aff=oddtdtcreator

Along Mosaic Roads consists of a series of lyrical peregrinations that chart journeys into the real and imagined spaces of wanderlust, desire, origins and memory. https://www.the87press.co.uk/shop/p/amr

15/07/2024

These three poems by Remi Graves explores homonyms, (mis)gendered bodies, alienation and disappearance: “a boi walks into a wood— / ouch!”

Read now on theHythe: Open Access:
http://www.the87press.co.uk/thehythe-open/digital-poetics-420-three-poems-by-remi-graves

Image by Remi Graves

11/07/2024

We're really excited for our second addition of Hummingbirds literary salon, this time at Housmans Bookshop on August 3rd 7 - 9:30pm!

Tickets are free with registration https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the87press-housmans-bookshop-present-hummingbirds-20-a-literary-salon-tickets-932354335917?aff=oddtdtcreator

This iteration will feature Edgar Garcia, John Wilkinson, and Calliope Michail; with a discussion chaired by Azad Ashim Sharma.

The hummingbird is a surrealist motif that symbolises love and dialogue, something which we wish to foster further within poetry and literature. Each salon event offers an intimate space for live poetry readings and discussion.

Hummingbirds 2.0 features Edgar Garcia, John Wilkinson, and Calliope Michail; discussion will be chaired by Azad Ashim Sharma