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Carcanet publishes an award-winning, comprehensive and diverse list of modern and classic poetry. Carcanet was a literary magazine, founded in 1962.

Michael Hind, a member of the original editorial board, recalls how the idea was to 'collect together and publish as a periodical poetry, short fiction, and "intelligent criticism of all the arts"; there were to be both student and senior members contributions.' The intention was to link Oxford and Cambridge. The magazine Carcanet had fallen on hard times by October 1967 when Michael Schmidt, a ne

wly arrived undergraduate at Wadham College, Oxford, took it over. Times got harder still. In 1969 as a swansong the magazine produced a few pamphlets: poetry by new writers from Britain, India and the United States, and a book of translations. The reviews were encouraging. In 1970-1971 Carcanet Press became Ltd. The swansong continues, the bird having upped sticks and left Matthew Arnold's (and Robert Graves's) South Hinksey, Oxford, for Thomas de Quincey's Manchester.

'Continue to build' is what independent literary houses must do. They build readership and backlist, but also authority and their own legitimacy. We make books available and, in an age of disposables, keep them available. As the balance of publishing shifts to front list, Carcanet, radical in disposition, keeps books in print for as long as possible. This kind of husbandry has more in common with forestry than with fast food. Carcanet enjoys Arts Council support and can range more widely than commercial publishers dare to do. Its list includes, alongside new writers from all over the world, major authors from the twentieth and earlier centuries, figures about whom readers and writers need to know if they are to get a hold on the Modern and its aftermaths. Our commitments involve the mammoth Ford Madox Ford, Robert Graves and Hugh MacDiarmid projects. We have forged strong Anglo-European and Anglo-Commonwealth links. Our focal interest is in literature in English -- all the Englishes now spoken and written. In 1999 the Press acquired Oxford University's fine poetry list. OxfordPoets now emanate from Manchester. Latterly we have forged close links with Glasgow, where Carcanet has an editorial office in the School of English and Scottish Literature and Language. Since the age of the venerable Bede, translation has been crucial to the growth of our literature. Carcanet is naturally active here, producing award-winning translations of the classics and of new work from around the world. Dedicated to discovery, appraisal and reappraisal, Carcanet is a unique survivor in the precarious world of literary imprints. Our editorial continuity has generated a list of deep coherence and innovation, not only among the authors rediscovered but also among the new authors we publish. In an age teased by post-Modern relativism and post-millennial uncertainty, where literary value sometimes plays second fiddle to the demon profit and that other demon of ephemeral political imperatives, Carcanet takes its bearing from Modernism. It bases its activities on the best practice of the last century, during which great lists were forged -- some of which did not survive as independents into the changing twenty-first century.

18/03/2024

Join Isabel Galleymore on 27th March at 7pm for the online launch of her upcoming second collection, Baby Schema! As well as reading from the book, Isabel will be joined in conversation by host Jorie Graham.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0Poqk4GXQRu0D9TvlHoVeg

15/03/2024

In this week's newsletter, get to know Isabel Galleymore's new collection, Baby Schema, plus news from Jason Allen-Paisant, reviews in the Poetry Book Society Bulletin and a poem from William Letford! https://mailchi.mp/carcanet/baby-schema-galleymore

15/03/2024

'My sister taught me how.
Oh Bonaventura, they wanted
me to marry him, the slack-jawed widower.'

On the Substack this week read Victoria Kennefick’s ‘Hunger Strikes (Broken Sequence)’, taken from PN Review 256:

https://open.substack.com/pub/pnreview/p/hunger-strikes-broken-sequence-by?r=pgoc1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

14/03/2024

This month we are publishing Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore!

In her second collection, the adorable other is not just an imagined future child, but also a tree frog, a weather-worn statue and often the speaker herself, who dreams of quitting adulthood and an endangered world. ‘Mother Earth’ is less an entity to be revered than a command to care-giving. Lyrics and syllabically-constrained fables examine the play and power involved in creating new life, whether biologically or via cartoonists’ animation.

Galleymore hones in on cuteness and its relationships to hyper-capitalism and environmental crisis to produce a deliberately queasy ecopoetics. Animal extinctions are likened to failed businesses and sainthood is granted to a dubious character named Michael Mouse. Studies of wild creatures join those of pets, pot plants and animal videos: here is a new nature – one shaped by the extremes of our contemporary desires.

Order your copy using the code MARCHBOOKS for 20% off and free UK P&P: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800173880

14/03/2024

More good prize news for Jason Allen-Paisant and his second collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, which has made it onto the 2024 Jhalak Prize longlist! Congratulations to Jason and all the other books and publishers included. Read more on our website:

One of the outstanding literary publishers of our time, Carcanet Press has a special emphasis on poetry from around the world. This is the best place to buy poetry on the web, and offers a massive resource of poems, reviews and pictures for free.

13/03/2024

‘What’s cute is often thought of as precious in both senses of the word. Artificial and twee on the one hand. On the other, loved and held dear. While researching Beanie Babies and Disney legacies for Baby Schema, my eyes have grown larger, cartoon-like and glittery.’

This week’s blog is written by Isabel Galleymore, author of Baby Schema, which is published this month. Read it here: https://carcanetblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/baby-schema-isabel-galleymore.html

12/03/2024

In this week's Meet the Author video, watch Isabel Galleymore introduce her upcoming second collection, Baby Schema!

Listen to Isabel Galleymore introduce her second poetry collection, Baby Schema. Isabel discusses writing about the natural world playfully through pervesity...

11/03/2024

Congratulations to Jason Allen-Paisant who has been longlisted for the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature from with his second collection of poems, Self-Portrait as Othello!🎉

Read more at our website: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/np38.shtml

08/03/2024

You can now watch the online launch of Eleanor Among the Saints by Rachel Mann, hosted by Kim Moore!

The recording of the online book launch held for Eleanor Among the Saints, the latest poetry collection from Rachel Mann, hosted by Kim Moore on 31st January...

08/03/2024

Carcanet Press | Rebecca Hurst | Eli Payne Mandel | Rachel Mann | 08.03.24 - https://mailchi.mp/carcanet/rebecca-hurst-771966

07/03/2024

This month we are publishing The Iron Bridge by Rebecca Hurst!

Her first collection bridges memory and observation, noting the detail of the natural world and our changing relation to it. The book's places are made familiar by walking. It encounters other worlds alive with new and recovered ideas and images – from the folk traditions of her Sussex childhood, to archival encounters with a nineteenth-century nurse-explorer, and her undergraduate training as a Kremlinologist.

Her language is deeply rooted, as keenly aware of etymologies as of history. Shaped by myth, history and desire, the poems of The Iron Bridge are theatrical, fierce, music-infused.

Order your copy using the code MARCHBOOKS for 20% off and free UK P&P: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800173941

06/03/2024

‘I’m not good at recognising when things are done; maybe because I have difficulty with the concept of linear time. The idea of definitive beginning or end points feels suspect to me, a fabrication or tidying up of the very untidy reality of hominins’ six million or so years on this planet.’

This week’s blog is written by Rebecca Hurst, author of The Iron Bridge, which is published this month. Read it here: https://carcanetblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-iron-bridge-rebecca-hurst.html

06/03/2024

Congratulations to Eli Payne Mandel, whose debut collection The Grid has been shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Prize 2024! 🎉

Read the full news here: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/np37.shtml

05/03/2024

Listen to Rebecca Hurst introduce her debut poetry collection, The Iron Bridge. Rebecca discusses the trajectory of her writing career so far, including the locations which inform the poems and their relationships to nature, memory and narrative.

Listen to Rebecca Hurst introduce her debut peotry collection, The Iron Bridge. Rebecca discusses the trajectory of her writing career so far, including the ...

01/03/2024

Our March books are now available to pre-order!

In Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore, the adorable other is not just an imagined future child, but also a tree frog, a weather-worn statue and often the speaker herself, who dreams of quitting adulthood and an endangered world. Galleymore hones in on cuteness and its relationships to hyper-capitalism and environmental crisis to produce a deliberately queasy ecopoetics.

The poems in Near-Life Experience by Rowland Bagnall are curious about the present moment, its weather and animals, its objects and things. They want to make it real in language, catching it before it vanishes. Documenting landscapes, paintings, insects and trees, Near-Life Experience offers a world where understanding is subverted by the day’s distractions and the unexpected shapes of the imagination.

The poems in Gillian Clarke's The Silence begin during lockdown, to whose silences Clarke listens so attentively that other voices emerge. As the book progresses, that silence deepens, in the poems about her mother and childhood, about the Great War and its aftermaths, and in her continuing attention to Welsh places and names, and the rituals which make that world come in to focus.

Rebecca Hurst's first collection bridges memory and observation, noting the detail of the natural world and our changing relation to it. The book's places are made familiar by walking. It encounters other worlds alive with new and recovered ideas and images – from the folk traditions of her Sussex childhood, to archival encounters with a nineteenth-century nurse-explorer, and her undergraduate training as a Kremlinologist.

All March books can be pre-ordered using the code MARCHBOOKS for 20% off and free UK P&P: https://www.carcanet.co.uk

01/03/2024

Read a poem from Gillian Clarke's forthcoming collection, The Silence, in this week's newsletter, alongside discovering our other March books and listening to audio from our authors on the BBC and RTE! https://mailchi.mp/carcanet/gillian-clarke-thesilence

29/02/2024

Happy publication day to our February books!

Just a reminder that today is the last day you can use the code FEBBOOKS for 20% off and free UK P&P when ordering from the Carcanet site - order yours here: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/index.shtml

28/02/2024

'But You Can Fool the Camera' by V.R. 'Bunny' Lang.

This poem is taken from the collection The Miraculous Season: Selected Poems, edited by Rosa Campbell, which is published tomorrow!

27/02/2024

'Trying to Explain My Attention Span for the First Time' by Victoria Kennefick, from her collection Egg/Shell, which is released later this week.

27/02/2024

Celebrate the online launch of Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick on Wednesday 13th March!

Victoria will be reading a selection of poems from the new collection, and will be joined in conversation by host Elaine Feeney. There will also be an opportunity to ask Victoria your own questions.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0awFxM7fQC2Gpuh1ULm1ug

26/02/2024

Great to see Gillian Clarke's poem 'Spring Equinox, 2021' from her new collection, The Silence, chosen as The Guardian Poem of the Week by Carol Rumens, who writes: 'The Silence is full of poems which remind us of the importance of place, and the demand of its words and silences to be listened to.'

A tender hymn to rural Wales in the wake of the Covid pandemic from the Cardiff-born poet’s new collection, The Silence

26/02/2024

'May Face' from Sleepers Awake by Oli Hazzard, which is published this Thursday.

23/02/2024

Next Wednesday, 7-8pm, join us to celebrate the online launch of Sleepers Awake by Oli Hazzard.

Oli will be joined by Jess Cotton for an evening of readings, discussion and audience Q&A - register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_sO9zD-SqTIqEkviTIwNTFA #/registration

23/02/2024

In this week's newsletter you can read a poem from Oli Hazzard's new collection, Sleeper's Awake, new reviews and prize news, and watch the launch of Angela Leighton's new book. https://mailchi.mp/carcanet/oli-hazzard

22/02/2024

This month we are publishing Sleepers Awake by Oli Hazzard!

Oli Hazzard's third collection emerges from the daily disarray of care and work, nature and technology. Its ambitious, formally various poems extract 'the ore / from boredom', as memory—personal, familial, social, historical—and the collective memory of poetry itself are wrenched out of shape by dramatic disruptions in rhythm, space and scale. The sadness and pain of forgetting is here too, alongside its unexpected forms of potential.

The title, borrowed from the Lutheran hymn that inspired a Bach cantata, catches the book's dreamy, kaleidoscopic, cross-temporal dialogues. Through satirical, allusive, tender, hopeful poems, Sleepers Awake makes spaces for intimacy with the reader, arguing 'through an off-key melody / for the jovial texture of batsh*t relations, for the pleasure of live-drawing in sceptical company'.

Order yours using the code FEBBOOKS for 20% off and free UK P&P: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800172999

21/02/2024

‘This book, Sleepers Awake, was the most social-feeling thing I’ve written – explicitly addressed to, and written with, other people: living and dead, imaginary and real, adult and child, speaking and unspeaking.’

This week’s blog is written by Oli Hazzard, whose second collection, Sleepers Awake, is published this month. Read it here: https://carcanetblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/sleepers-awake-oli-hazzard.html

21/02/2024

We're over the moon to share the news that Carcanet Press has been shortlisted for Northern Small Press of the Year in the British Book Awards for the sixth year running!

Many congratulations to our fellow shortlistees in the Northen category, Smokestack, Saraband, Dead Ink, Bluemoose and Fly on the Wall! And heartfelt thanks to the judges for recognising our hard work in a challenging year.

Read more about the news on our website:

20/02/2024

The online poetry short course is back for 2024!

Delivered in collaboration with the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, the course provides an exciting opportunity to be tutored by acclaimed poets. The course is held on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 18th June - 11th July.

Find out more here: https://estore.manchester.ac.uk/short-courses/faculty-of-humanities/the-school-of-arts-languages-and-culture/poetry-short-course/poetry-short-course

16/02/2024

In this week's newsletter you can find a poem by V.R. 'Bunny' Lang, details of our upcoming events, and how to book onto Carcanet and UoM's upcoming poetry short course! https://mailchi.mp/carcanet/bunny-lang-771946

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Videos

Festival Summit 1080x1080

What role can poetry play in addressing the climate crisis? Olive Senior and Jorie Graham (joining virtually) will come together with other leading ecopoets for the Poetry International Opening Night: Festival Summit at the Southbank Centre. Book here: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/literature-poetry/poetry-international-opening-night-festival-summit 21.07.23 | 7.30pm | Southbank Centre

The Lascaux Notebooks: A Preview

Learn about the life and work of Jean-Luc Champerret in this video made by editor and translator of The Lascaux Notebooks, Philip Terry. The Lascaux Notebooks is published this month - find out more and buy the book with 20% off using code APRILBOOKS: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=2414 Watch on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0f1bZP-Id8

Vahni Capildeo at Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival

Watch Vahni Capildeo, author of the Forward Prizes for Poetry shortlisted 'Venus as Bear', reading from her work at the Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival! This video was kindly filmed and shared by Tony Hill, which we are very thankful for. To learn more about Vahni, please visit our website: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1167

IN THE HOUSE! Ian Pople who contributes to PN Review came in and read his poem Ravenna from PNR 235.

John Greening reads Dennis O'Driscoll

Hopefully you can view this! Here's John Greening reading Dennis O'Driscoll's poem 'No, Thanks' at the launch of O'Driscoll's Collected Poems in Dublin last month

In the house: Grevel Lindop reads 'Stones' from his latest collection, Luna Park.

In the house. Judith Willson reads a poem from her forthcoming book CROSSING THE MIRROR LINE.

In the house! Poet and quondam Carcanet editor Helen Tookey came to see us yesterday and was prevailed upon to read a poem!

The first female Jamaican Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison reading from her Collected Poems at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester

In the House: Evan Jones reads 'Later Emperors' from PN Review 232

In the House: Rachel Mann reads from PN REVIEW 235 Chris Beckett's translation from the Ethiopian poet Alemu Tebeje's of his poem O, WESTERN DEMOCRACY!

In the House: Matthew Welton performs 'Hey, hey' from his latest collection The Number Poems

In the House: Helen Mort reads 'Girl' from Anthony Burgess' Revolutionary Sonnets, reprinted and reissued by Carcanet for the #Burgess100 centenary. Helen will be one of a host of people reading from the collection at the launch on 16th June at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester