LUP to launch contemporary poetry series

Liverpool University Press is launching a new series of poetry books that celebrate risk-taking, called Pavilion Poetry.
 
Pavilion Poetry, which will be edited by poetry professor Deryn Rees-Jones, aims to seek out and publish all that is daring and relevant in contemporary poetry.
 
Launching in April 2015, the series will debut with three books from a trio of poets from the UK: Mona Arshi, winner of the 2014 Manchester Poetry Prize; Sarah Corbett, a T S Eliot Prize shortlistee; and Eleanor Rees, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

Pavilion Poetry will publish Arshi’s debut collection, Small Hands, which it describes as “a rich rumination on a variety of human experience: grief, pleasure, hardship, and tradition”.  It will also publish Corbett’s verse-novel And She Was, in which “time and narrative bend and interlock across a play of poetic forms to compose one story of love and loss”; and Rees’ third full-length collection, Blood Child, where she uses language and imagery “to enact the many aspects of change”.  

Alison Welsby, editorial director at Liverpool University Press, said: "This new venture for the Press is an opportunity to highlight some of the most original voices in contemporary poetry. Pavilion Poetry is an obvious development for LUP, building on many decades as a leading publisher of poetry criticism.”

Rees-Jones said: "The poets we are publishing ask important questions about the contemporary world, and do so fearlessly and movingly. It is a huge privilege to be working with them and for their work to be at the heart of a Press that will continue to publish the very best in new writing.”

He added: “We think Pavilion Poetry will find its place among the top poetry publishing houses today."