Home of the Best in Caribbean and Black British writing. Decolonising bookshelves since 1985.
(9)
Congrats to Samantha Thornhill!
The latest issue of The Fight & The Fiddle featuring Samantha Thornhill is officially live!!
What's inside:
👉 Interview including video clips
👉 Exclusive NEW poems
👉 Critical review by Carmin Wong
👉 Exclusive NEW writing prompt
Read now 👉 https://loom.ly/1EzZ3To
i have been in deep communion with Ricantations by Loretta Collins Klobah for a while. sometimes i get so obsessed/possessed with a poetry collection, that the best way for me to transmute, xcorcise, xplain, let the words themes feelins information etc move through me, is to create a cento poem from the words and sentences from the collection that stick themselves to me.
all communication is translation...and this is a kinda translation too.
so here is a translation creation (a de-cantation/re-incarnation/re-creation/distillation), made with the energy, words and love of Ricantations, called :
Come Shadow Spirits Of Righteous Riotous Rage - a cento created from lines/words (with slight changes) from the poetry collection Ricantations by Loretta Collins Klobah
dedicated to ‘mad’, mad, mad, spirits.
For and After Loretta Collins Klobah.
“Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.”
— R.D. Laing
“From matter to spirit is to see something beyond the senses”
— Samuel Lind
come, shadow :
a likeness of myself
tucked away under my tongue.
in my mind.
muse.
revel rebel red face in a cut-
eye of pout and rage.
red-eyed gargoyle.
human tissue.
stiff divining rod.
still.
sprouting wings.
head drooped.
legs crossed.
Buddha pose.
plastic bit in mouth.
biting the railing.
what was she guarding but
her whole self lifting off
into the dark sky.
back-shadowed in black,
she always walks
at the threshold of shadows.
she’s lit from within
like a pocket manifesto.
a red gr***de.
she was
in the cage
something
was going to happen to her
she kept
humming and moving out into the sea
talking with spirits that rode her
belly endlessly
she wants
a quiet space where
she can
gather her words
send them flying
sometimes
when
she dreams
she wakes
gasping
today, she is not quelled,
chastened or hushed.
stanchions hold against her fury.
lover of the Holy Ghost,
who is here with her?
speaking to her?
keeping her alive?
thumbs through her thoughts
dials of a machine that
someone will
have to set for intensity
someone will
have to turn on
she reaches
the crescendo
she leaves
her body
billows above it
skeletal tones
of every bone
winged horse
star-birthing nebula
look for the glow, but
do not
disturb her
fling open
windows
liberate
let her
eyes open wide and
light up
i want
the blue
goddess to rise up
come, shadow :
memorialise without memory?
what are we but moment and memory—
memory of gaps—
memoir of repairs—
i remember
*
the room full of women
glowing virgins
bloomed tropically
everywhere in my head, in terror
of being alone, still
anomalies.
you are there, girl—
the woman
splayed in the vineyard
the woman
split in the cane
a woman
walked into the dark water
a woman
who sits at her kitchen table past midnight
a woman
who had jumped out of her skin
a woman
straightening
her skirt, sleeping between
bread knives
women
numbed to unriddling
women
who wanted to touch me
remember
a woman as slim and fragile
precious and precocious
hanging herself
by a dressing gown sash
that’s my face—
a face you
remember?
you can
see
nothing!
come shadow :
Yemayá and
Obatalá’s children
born of the marriage
of earth and water
constantly whipped
by the wind
high sea-spray
salt mist that seeped
burned into all bloody
crevices of wounds
palette of women
sacred heart and red halo
a red crown of thorns
red lipstick matching stigmatas
that will gape
like bloodied vaginas
green seed
green heart
yellow dress and red apron
indigo crystal ball
African mask
lapis lazuli and ivory
small ones still on the Earth
sharing this space on Earth
for a time Bacchus
blood-born women
broken and uptorn
bush bramble and bloom
bruised feet bare and draggling
casualties of dusk
crossed-their-hearts
with brassieres of bullets
Mary mother of Earth’s living things
mutilated women
r***d women and girls
tortured violated killed
—embodied in one girl—
her face is monument
blue
tree knot on forehead
one colossal stone head
flesh more than stone
fractured face flooded by moonlight
a purple-black hand reaching out
of the water as if in hope
of rescue from drowning
the water was lit
only with one long line of golden light—
brown-green river of consciousness
each small wave in
the beam-path shining.
come, shadow:
- the face of a worried eighty-year-old concentrating
on his death
- the wrongs that had been done to him in life
- the centre of his own universe
- he stayed alone
- we remember where he took flight
- meth-headed boy
- dismantling girls in the disco
- boy’s dreams
- before the sun stunned us
- thrown out of olive groves by his father
- he wanted money
- he sells himself
- the boys chanted kill, slit its throat
- fish blood
- split the throat that sings
- men yell
- he fights with my neighbour
- propensity for domestic abuse
- control the pulse of another’s life
- conversation undiscoverable
- cancer kept spreading its net
- how does one use power to overcome another
- work the gyal, then duck, not see her again
- his wife had died
- he was jealous
- his mouth was trying to bite
- the women did not want to play
- his wife left
- tending his love wound
- gone tribal
- tormented
- tap root spears him
- humiliated destroyed
- naked and blooded
- intimate shame
- fear of obliteration
- discarded
- when even storm clouds refuse you
- a dart it pierces him falling into his soul
- a fractured mirror where myths collide
- hand-held stone
- troubled islands
- the middle of the field is empty
- the centrepiece is missing
- praying for renewal
- nothing now is normal
- Genesis
- the moving man still running
- to remake the lower world into his own image
come, shadow
x incised his stone vision x
x opened the portals x
x he prepared the way x
x marked the spot x
x raises a hand to point x
x at the horizon x
x night watch for a way x
x back into paradise x
x between sky and Earth x
x ancestral past x
x like a boy pulling himself up x
x he climbed higher daily x
x a man’s nebulous inner journey x
x he’ll scoop a fist of earth x
x grab one handful of stars x
x he will bring order to chaos x
x funnel himself into his creation x
x ground him x
x transmit x
come shadows
the buzzed-out
don’t fit what is built
and bargained for in this world
green eyes, glittering visions—
hears the beating—
ten beats per second, hitting
the ground with a speed.
celestial bodies shift
between dusk and dawn
take all the time in the world—
what knowledge?
what balm can we offer?
help them crossover.
fill their graves with tears.
breath incantation.
names we carry.
their stones will tap into soil.
***
the point is
pulse!
the point is :
. that moment of satisfaction .
. of touching someone .
. only the love that is projected .
. receive .
. everyday looks .
. pe*****te skin .
. nurse a secret thrill .
. they shared .
. green maroonage .
. find the cemí of these mountains .
. energy and movement ever forward .
. endless or**sm of the imagination .
. receive your gifts of music, poetry, and a strong mind .
. feel .
. new incantations of something primal in us .
. money does not pay .
. everyday, glimmering works .
. life is on the wire .
. life is lived for lonely work it cannot be avoided .
. what if i used my one life...
the point is :
this is how matter
upon death, became pure
energy, a green light that could
meld into any form.
the point is :
whatever
you want
just want?
the point is
to look
with wonder at life
having its own way?
Earth’s constant flash
of images seen purely
and perfectly?
the point is i couldn’t find it.
the point is—
the woman you are
looking for
is not
a woman yet!
the point is—
shadow,
what flag you bring
for me!
the point is :
i am broken-down too!
the point is i believed that i was not a husk.
the point is you are this hush.
the point is :
we can’t see the cause!
the point is
in my mind
in my mind
in my mind...
the point is :
in the air
pivoting on the axis
of the wire
edging forward—
perhaps a woman wants—
searches for—
equilibrium—
a balancing pole—
just the smell of coffee,
dignity, redemption, to be useful,
to be lived;
extreme determination
to be
free.
clench bit in your teeth.
terror dances in my mind.
when, if not now, would you do it?
xXx
come shadow—
click a button
to find
a link to me.
i see.
i see
we have been
asked to head home.
chosen to come back.
maybe i’ll go
to the sky.
one stands in the doorway.
even if you follow me here,
i don’t own anything.
pick out my memories
my own scars
spill over into tears
past the silt edge
beyond healing.
stay with me
for my home stretch.
ring out the hour—
i am here!
i was!
i lived!
i dreamed
at midnight I watched—
deep eyes concentrating,
utterly alert and focused,
night of charcoal sky and sea.
wild wind that came in the nights.
at twilight i look up.
i thought—
the sky smells
the air smells
my breath smells.
under rain, through night, into day
i kept walking alone—
a path along the ridge
to the ruins,
to look into the heart
of the universe.
i have walked down
into the Earth, descended.
the truth is
God,
or the First Science Officer
of God, was looking
for a soul. that Holy Ghost is
visible, manifest, a plasma flame—
a current
jumped
into me
shook me...
shadow, the point is—
you must wave a flag
then it makes a kind of sense.
one year after
the lightning
tubes of light
futuristic
i knew
how to balance
blue stone.
teetering on scaffolding—
just the right angle,
in just the right light
come shadow
in her hand she balances
centering the Galaxy
feathered wings
obsidian eyes
waving goodbye
any one of us could
be inside her/e.
everyone will end
up t/here—
Legba’s X on
a concrete wall.
i could go on and on
oOo
the full has
never been
told—
not one word
decipherable!
***
Peter Kalu chats with Rawan Mohamed about Colonial Countryside, our latest anthology.
Peter Kalu is a novelist, playwright and poet and has previously won the BBC Playwrights Award, The Voice/Jamaica Information Service Marcus Garvey Scholarsh...
What a line-up!
Buy tickets for Bocas Lit Fest at the British Library 2024 at British Library from the official retailer, The British Library Cultural Events.
This month’s reading picks from the Caribbean, with reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan of Son of Grace by Vaneisa Baksh; A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias S Buckell; You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy; and Bath of Herbs by Emily Zobel Marshall.
This month’s reading picks from the Caribbean, with reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan of Son of Grace by Vaneisa Baksh; A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias S Bu ...
Peepal Tree Press is saddened to learn of the death of Ameena Gafoor who made an immense contribution to the literary arts in Guyana and to her role in setting up the Ameena Gafoor Institute dedicated to the study of indentureship and its legacies. We provide a link to al creighton's article in Stabroek News which celebrates the importance of Ameena's work.
Read al creighton's article at Stabroek News here: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2023/01/01/sunday/arts-on-sunday/ameena-gafoor-honoured-for-her-contributions-to-literature-the-arts/
Image: Pauline Iakovleva on Unsplash
A selection of Poems on the Underground posters featuring poets from Scotland and beyond will be on display at the Scottish Poetry Library during the 2024 Edinburgh Festival.
The exhibition is free to visit during opening hours and will run until early autumn.
It includes the poem "By Yourself, Boy" by Nii Ayikwei Parkes, from his collection The Makings of You (2010).
Nii also reads the iconic poem "Sumer is Icumen in" (Anon).
https://poemsontheunderground.org/scottish-poetry-library-poems-on-the-underground-exhibition
Prompt-a-Mania: A day retreat using prompts to produce multiple poems with Malika Booker
Date: Saturday 17 August 2024
Time: 10am–4pm BST
Venue: Online
Price: £54.88 + booking fee / £27.80 + booking fee (concessions)
Book now via the link below
Hey poetry lovers! Join prize-winning poet Malika Booker for a fun-filled and productive online event where we'll be diving into the world of poetry through writing prompts. Get ready for a day retreat like no other, where you'll have the chance to unleash your creativity and produce multiple drafts of poems.
Whether you're a seasoned poet or just starting out, this event is perfect for anyone looking to get inspired and have a blast with words. It is aimed at poets and students (undergraduates, Masters and Doctorate students) working towards a pamphlet or collections.
We will use poems, visual, audio and formal strategies to kick start new poems. You will leave with a toolbox of poetic techniques to kickstart your work in progress.
Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity to write alongside a community and connect with fellow poetry enthusiasts and let your imagination run wild. See you there!
Prompt-a-Mania: A day retreat using prompts to produce multiple poemsDate: Saturday 17 August 2024Time: 10am–4pm BSTVenue: OnlinePrice: £54.88 + booking fee / £27.80 + booking fee (concessions)Book now
Our very own Khadijah Ibrahiim is involved. Get submitting!
📭 We are currently accepting proposals for the RSL Literature Matters Awards! £20,000 is available to support a number of projects - yours could be one of them!
2024 Judges: Chris Gribble, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Farhana Shaikh
Closing 6 September: bit.ly/RSL_LMAs
Early bird offer: Order your Black History Month Resource Pack 2024!
Join us this October as we celebrate Black History Month and the contributions of Black Britons. https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/black-history-month-resource-pack-2024/
Happy Independence Day to a strong and resilient nation! 62 years freed…. Jamaica, One Love to the World
Can you help the SI Leeds Literary Prize find an exciting book by a British woman writer of Black or Asian descent? Hey involved!
Do you love reading? We're looking for book lovers to join our volunteer SI Readers' Choice Award team and help judge the 2024 prize!
The SI Readers' Choice Award sits alongside our main prize and is a valuable way of getting reader feedback to our shortlisted writers.
Find out more about what's involved on our website:
https://www.sileedsliteraryprize.com/were-looking-for-book-lovers-to-join-our-2024-si-readers-choice-team/
In person in Brooklyn.
Howell & Watson-Grant at Greenlight Bookstore Richard Georges Rhyme & Reason Event Carlos & Natera - Traveling Freely This Year's Theme, Faces of the Caribbean Scheduled for September 5-8, 2024 BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, August 5, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Fe...
Celebrate Women in Translation month with 30% off THE SEA NEEDS NO ORNAMENT all August with code THESEANEEDS30.
🐚🐚🐚
ENGLISH PEN TRANSLATION AWARD WINNER Co-editors and translators Loretta Collins Klobah and Maria Grau Perejoan present a bilingual anthology of thirty-three contemporary Caribbean women poets from the English and Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
🐚🐚🐚
Look out for an exlusive blog post from Loretta Collins Klobah and Maria Grau Perejoan coming in August.
🐚🐚🐚
Colonial Countryside is now available - and an editor's note from Jeremy Poynting View as Webpage Welcome Hello Jeremy, Happy Friday! We're enjoying the sunshine that's finally joined us here in Lee
July’s instalment of the Bocas Book Bulletin is here: https://trinidadexpress.com/features/local/new-releases-and-best-sellers/article_e388207c-3c01-11ef-944c-9f6353dfafa8.html
📖Featuring new releases by Jeda Pearl, , , Monique Roffey, and Amalie Howard;
📖Regional authors and poets who have won or been listed for international prizes: Kevin Jared Hosein, , Roger Robinson, and Jacqueline Crooks;
📖June’s bestsellers at Paper Based Bookshop by , , Safiya Sinclair, , and Ingrid Persaud; and
🕊An in memoriam to Funso Aiyejina, writer, scholar, Emeritus Professor at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, founding board member and former Deputy Festival Director of the Bocas Lit Fest, and co-founder and longtime co-facilitator of The Cropper Foundation’s Residential Workshop for Caribbean Writers.
The Bocas Book Bulletin is a monthly roundup of Caribbean literary news, curated by the Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival, and published in the Trinidad Express Newspapers
Penguin Books Delacorte Press Peepal Tree Press Royards Publishing Company Limited Walter Scott Prize Library and Archives Canada The Society of Authors
HOT OFF THE PRESS: Colonial Countryside
Colonial Countryside is a book of commissioned poems and short stories produced by ten global majority writers featuring National Trust houses with significant colonial histories. This includes properties whose owners engaged in the slavery business, in colonial administration or who were involved with the East India Company or British rule in India.
Historians have accompanied these pieces with commentaries detailing the evidence upon which each creative commission was based. The book ends with a photo essay by the project’s commissioned photographer, Ingrid Pollard, the Turner Prize shortlisted artist who has pioneered critical interventions into the supposed whiteness of the British countryside.
Peter Kalu’s story gives an account of Richard Watt of Speke Hall reflecting on his Jamaican experiences; Karen Onojaife’s story is set in Charlecote Park where a once-favoured Black page finds himself cut adrift; Jacqueline Crooks’ magical realist tale brings together an abused Indian princess and enslaved African employed in the mahogany trade; Ayanna Lloyd Banwo has written about Diego, the Spanish-speaking African who became Drake’s closest confidante; Masuda Snaith’s short story cycle tracks the cross-currents of empire across Lord Curzon’s Kedleston Hall; Maria Thomas’s account of Penrhyn Castle links past and present. It is a gothic tale of history biting back. Malachi’s story features a young Black man who dates a white girl with a taste for country house visiting, including Calke Abbey. Other contributions include poetic meditations on artefacts to be found in country houses. Hannah Lowe reflects on the taste for Chinoiserie, Seni Seneviratne gives voice to the enslaved children trapped within the frames of 18 th century art and Andre Bagoo makes connections between William Blathwayt of Dyrham Park and two stands featuring kneeling African men, brought to the house by his uncle in the seventeenth century.
The cover photograph is by Ingrid Pollard.
For this and more, check out our latest newsletter!
https://conta.cc/3YdKPrJ
Colonial Countryside is now available - and an editor's note from Jeremy Poynting View as Webpage Welcome Hello Jeremy, Happy Friday! We're enjoying the sunshine that's finally joined us here in Lee
DON'T MISS: The Edinburgh launch of Jeda Pearl's Time Cleaves Itself, at Lighthouse Books TONIGHT! (And livestreamed for our Caribbean readers!)
You can also grab your copy of Colonial Countryside, read an introduction to Manzu Islam's Godzilla and the Song Bird, and read all about the RSL honours for Khadijah Ibrahiim and Nii Ayikwei Parkes.
For this and more, check out our latest newsletter!
https://conta.cc/4fcvE8l
Colonial Countryside is now available - and an editor's note from Jeremy Poynting View as Webpage Welcome Hello Jeremy, Happy Friday! We're enjoying the sunshine that's finally joined us here in Lee
Grab your copy of Colonial Countryside before it arrives in bookstores! Also, in case you missed it, our newsletter includes:
- an introduction to Manzu Islam's Godzilla and the Song Bird,
- the Edinburgh launch of Jeda Pearl's Time Cleaves Itself,
- RSL honours for Khadijah Ibrahiim and Nii Ayikwei Parkes
For this and more, check out our latest newsletter
https://conta.cc/4bOLH9z
Colonial Countryside is now available - and an editor's note from Jeremy Poynting View as Webpage Welcome Hello Jeremy, Happy Friday! We're enjoying the sunshine that's finally joined us here in Lee
Colonial Countryside arrives in the office! Plus an introduction to Manzu Islam's Godzilla and the Song Bird, the Edinburgh launch of Jeda Pearl's Time Cleaves Itself, and RSL honours for Khadijah Ibrahiim and Nii Ayikwei Parkes https://conta.cc/4d8GYjM
Colonial Countryside is now available - and an editor's note from Jeremy Poynting View as Webpage Welcome Hello Jeremy, Happy Friday! We're enjoying the sunshine that's finally joined us here in Lee
Writing in sx salon, Geoffrey Philp says of Emily Zobel Marshall's Bath of Herbs:
"In Bath of Herbs, the rich, evocative language, sensory imagery, and at times intimate, confessional tone grounded in themes of resistance offers a powerful multigenerational therapeutic narrative and an invitation to the healing center of Marshall’s mythmaking."
poems of healing and transformation Written by Geoffrey Philp for sx salon on Sunday, June 30th, 2024 In her debut collection of poems, Bath of Herbs, Emily Zobel Marshall uses carefully crafted imagery from English, Welsh, and Caribbean landscapes to explore heritage, identity, womanhood, grief, an...
Michael Mitchell, writes in Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies, about Jennifer Rahim's Goodbye Bay:
"a highly impressive novel with skilful characterization, convincing dialogue, evocative natural descriptions, and a differentiated narrative persona alternating curiosity and protective reticence in a style that can range from sly humour to a haunting sense of the uncanny. Above all it is informed with a serious intention which wears its scholarly familiarity with the social and historical background lightly and deals with themes that are burningly relevant today."
"a highly impressive novel" Written by Michael Mitchell for Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies on Friday, June 28th, 2024 "a highly impressive novel with skilful characterization, convincing dialogue, evocative natural descriptions, and a differentiated narrative persona alternating curiosity...
Check out our newsletter, and be in with a chance of a copy of Merle Collins' historical fiction novel Ocean Stirrings, based on the life of ( 's mother). Merle's latest book has just been named a finalist in the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2024.
We're also very excited at the as early copies of Jeda Pearl's upcoming Time Cleaves Itself have landed on our doorstep. a video of Jeda performing her work to get your poetry fix.
Finally, don't miss our upcoming events in and .
https://conta.cc/4bXxFmF
'Other Leopards' by Denis Williams
Denis Williams was a highly accomplished artist, who also taught and published in the fields of West Indian and African art and anthropology, and, from 1974, was Director of Art and Archaeology with Guyana’s Ministry of Education and Culture.
Lionel Froad is a Guyanese who works as a draftsman on an archeological survey in the mythical Jokhara in the horn of Africa. There he hopes to rediscover the self he calls ‘Lobo’, his alter ego from ‘ancestral times’, a ‘pregnant load’ he has carried with him ‘waiting to be freed’, which he thinks slumbers ‘behind the cultivated mask’ of Lionel.
Lionel Froad is a Guyanese who works as a draftsman on an archeological survey in the mythical Jokhara in the horn of Africa. There he hopes to rediscover the self he calls ‘Lobo’, his alter ego from ‘ancestral times’, a ‘pregnant load’ he has carried with him ‘waiting to be freed’, which he thinks slumbers ‘behind the cultivated mask’ of Lionel.
But Jokhara brings no magical re-immersion for ‘Lionel looking for Lobo’. There are his complex relationships with other members of the team, his filial (and oedipal) relationship with Hughie, his white boss, and with Catherine, a Welsh girl on the team to whom Lionel finds himself passionately attracted, despite the disapproving inner voice of Lobo and Hughie’s paternalistic interference.
And at the points where communication breaks down with local Jokharans, Lionel/Lobo is forced to recognize what a breach the there has been in his New World psyche as a result of slavery and centuries of separation.
With wit and above all with ruthless honesty in its exploration of the themes of identity and belonging, in Other Leopards, Denis Williams wrote one of the most important Caribbean novels of the past fifty years.
With an introduction by Victor Ramraj.
🎉🎉 'Ocean Stirrings' is a finalist! 🎉🎉
We are absolutely elated!
We are currently running a giveaway. Comment 'Ocean 'Sirrings' below for a chance to win!
HAPPY BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND 😄🎊
17 Kings Avenue
Leeds
LS61QS
| Monday | 9am - 5pm |
| Tuesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Wednesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Thursday | 9am - 5pm |
| Friday | 9am - 5:15pm |
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Peepal Tree Press posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Send a message to Peepal Tree Press:
Shara McCallum (@shara_mccallum) reads from her recent poetry collection ‘No Ruined Stone.’ If you’d like to hear more sign up to our Book Club event this Friday. link in our bio!!! #sharamccallum #noruinedstone #onlinebookclub #ptpbookclub
Indies x Indies is a campaign led by independent poetry publishers to support independent bookshops. Launching to coincide with Independent Bookshop Week the campaign will provide a specially curated list of top poetry titles at a special discount, along with an exciting local and online events programme and poetry themed POS and social media support available from publishers and poets to participating shops. What do we offer? A core list of contemporary poetry titles curated by Anthony Anaxagorou of Out-Spoken Press in association with Inpress and PBS, supported by a wider list of titles from participating publishers for booksellers to explore. 50% discount to all independent bookshops on direct orders placed through Inpress in the promotional period. A range of POS and online resource support. Why are we doing this? To celebrate the vital relationship between indie bookshops and independent publishers and to strengthen that bond. To promote contemporary poetry. To allow bookshops to make informed buying decisions when looking to expand their poetry offering. To get people reading poetry! Coordinated by Inpress and Out-Spoken Press, the publishers participating in this initial rollout are: Boiler House Press, Burning Eye Books, Carcanet Press, Ignition Press, Makina Books, Pavilion Poetry, Peepal Tree Press, Penned in the Margins, The Poetry Business, Prototype, Nine Arches Press, Seren and Verve Poetry Press. More presses are set to join in the coming weeks. For more info, check the Indies x Indies website: https://www.indiesxindies.org/books
Check out Monique Roffey packing copies of The Mermaid of Black Conch for eager readers! This book is officially out 2 April 2020, although pre-orders have already started working their way out across the UK and should be reaching overseas customers in a few more days too. April 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch, at the start of the rainy season. A fisherman sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch – but attracts a sea-dweller he doesn’t expect. Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, has been swimming the Caribbean Sea for centuries. And she is entranced by this man David and his song. Pick up the book here: https://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/mermaid-black-conch
Aaaaaand the winner of our #ledburypoetryfestival giveaway is ....... @chyrels ✨✨ congratulations!
Opal Palmer Adisa reads from her novel Painting Away Regrets. Further information on the book can be found at our website: http://www.peepaltreepress.com/single_book_display.asp?isbn=9781845231521
Peepal Tree is a wholly independent company, founded in 1985, and now publishing around 20 books a year. We have published over 300 titles, and are committed to keeping most of them in print. The list features new writers and established voices. In 2009 we launched the Caribbean Modern Classics Series, which restores to print essential books from the past with new introductions.
We are grateful for financial support from Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation since 2011; we were a regularly funded organisation from 2006. Arts Council funding allows us to sustain Inscribe, a writer development project that supports writers of African & Asian descent in England.
We are based in Leeds in Yorkshire, part of an important independent publishing sector outside London. Everything happens at 17 King’s Avenue, in the Burley area, a rundown, multicultural part of Leeds (where business rates are low and you can get a good massala fish across the road). Visitors are always welcome and over the years a good many of our writers have called by.
BY FOUNDER AND MANAGING EDITOR JEREMY POYNTING
The idea for Peepal Tree began in the ruins of the former Lusignan sugar estate on the East Coast Demerara in Guyana in 1984. My friend Rooplall Monar was acting out several of the stories he had written, but was in despair at their ever seeing the light of day. Writers in Guyana usually went to the local printery, or Sheik Sadeek with his Adana press, but in those bad, grim Burnham days, there was no paper to be had. The government was keen to keep the means of communication out of opposition hands. Cheese was smuggled not paper. I promised to organise the printing of a small run (400 I think) back in England. The idea for the name came from the research I was doing in Indo-Caribbean writing. I wondered about ‘Banyan’ at first, but it didn’t have the right ring. There were peepal trees in the Caribbean, seeds of which had evidently been brought by Indian indentured labourers. (I recall a poem by an early Indo-Guyanese poet, Jacob Chinapen that described estate workers sitting under a peepal tree telling stories at the end of the day).
The name seemed a good metaphor (and pun) for something that was transplanted, as a symbol of staying connected to origins but putting down roots in a new environment. There was also a certain political point to the name. At the time, in the 1980s, the position of Indians in the Caribbean, was still one of cultural marginality and political exclusion. Much has changed since then, but I wanted the name to be both Indian and Caribbean. So, Backdam People became the first Peepal Tree publication, ‘typeset’ on a daisywheel printer and printed in the evenings at the college where I worked. New Beacon Books, all praise to John La Rose and Sarah White, who were my inspiration, sold quite a few in their bookshop; I took them to the Black, Third World and Radical Bookfair, and began to learn that publishers had to be salesmen too (a difficult lesson for a sheltered Further Education lecturer), and of course sold quite a few in book-starved Guyana. Sadly the Guyana dollar was devalued from about $8 to the £1 sterling to over $100 to the pound just after these were sold. That was a lesson about the intricacies of export, one that was reinforced later when our former US distributor went bust, and when a certain Trinidadian bookseller skipped off the island with her new American husband, leaving her large debts behind.
But Peepal Tree has never been discouraged for too long. Backdam People began what was a serious but quite expensive hobby, bringing out one or two books a year, until a friendly printer sold me an old Rotaprint offset press (it did depend on an elastic band) and with the help of my then teenage son, we began printing (that statement conceals many painful hours of trial and much error) Peepal Tree books in our garage. When the Arts Council gave me a grant, we bought an ear-splitting old folding machine and were really in business. A year or two later we were encouraged to put in a bid to the Arts Council for development funding. (They were evidently impressed by the fact that we actually delivered the books we promised.) I wrote the first business plan of my life (of astonishing naivety I see now – though no one in the Arts Council recognized this).
On the basis of being awarded development funding, I began to try to turn the hobby into a business, and took the risk of turning my FE lecturer’s job into a halftime post.
The business plan was to subsidize the overheads and printing costs of the books by running a parallel printing business, looking for jobs from other small publishers and local NGOs. What happened thereafter is a too long, involved and sometimes painful story to tell. (It involved being seriously in debt to the bank.) But the conclusion is that in time this did indeed become the reality and that is how Peepal Tree survived for many years as a printer publisher. It kept costs down and let us produce above our financial weight, but ultimately it limited the number of books we could do by cutting into editing time – and when it wrong, as it too frequently did, I hated printing, folding and binding with a passion. The romantic illusion of being William Blake making his own books was impossible to sustain. Since we stopped printing even our own books, there were far fewer “bad words” vented at 17 Kings Avenue.
There were two other crucial steps in Peepal Tree’s survival. One was the support of two Caribbean poets, who also happened to be business people (Ian McDonald and Ralph Thompson along with others), to help us turn Peepal Tree into a limited company with a small number of very friendly investors who did not expect to see any dividend returns on their investments – which helped us towards some financial stability. The other was the arrival of Hannah Bannister as an intern, who possessed all the practical skills that has kept Peepal Tree functioning since 1994.
It was the development of digital printing technologies that provided the way out, and solved the other problem that we were running out of space for storing book stock in our basement. After much careful study of spread-sheet calculations we took the decision in around 2010 to cease running a print shop and send out all our books to be made at the excellent Imprint Digital based in Exeter. It means that we print for anticipated demand and pre-orders and then keep reordering print runs when they are needed. Besides not tying up capital and exceeding storage space, it makes it much easier to keep books in print without any hiatus in supply. All our books are still typeset and designed in-house, the covers all designed by Hannah Bannister as one of the several hats she wears. No longer doing our own printing also meant that we had more time to devote to the development of books and writers, a capacity increased when we took on first Kwame Dawes and then Jacob Ross as respectively associate poetry and fiction editors. It also meant that there was more time to devote to marketing activities, a capacity increased when we took on Adam Lowe as an associate to run our social media and digital marketing, such as the regular newsletter.
It meant, too, that we were able to engage much more with the outside world and in specific partnership activities, both in the UK and the Caribbean. We are partners, for instance, with Leeds Soroptimists who support a literary prize for Black and Asian women writers of fiction, and with the CaribLit group now hosted by the Bocas Litfest in Trinidad (and funded at various points by the Commonwealth Foundation and supported by the British Council) – as well as managing a variety of English and Yorkshire-based writer and reader developments activities run under the Inscribe badge. Our main contribution to the CaribLit project has been to set up a joint imprint, Peekash Press, with Akashic Books in New York, USA. Peekash is devoted to unpublished Caribbean-based writers, with the intention that its editorial management should pass into Caribbean-based hands.
Peepal Tree Press has gone through half-a-dozen incarnations. We still run on a shoestring but have survived in that way for 30 years. We are committed to developing and changing into the future.
