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Nine Arches Press nabs 10 poetry collections 'alive with life-force'
Midlands-based independent poetry publisher Nine Arches Press has nabbed 10 titles, including debut collections and new poetry books by established authors. The themes of the new books, which will be published in 2024, range from birth, family and class, to climate change, trauma, illness and recovery.
Editor and director Jane Commane acquired world rights to the books directly from the authors. Commane also acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Khairani Barokka’s amuk from Abi Fellows, who at the time was an agent at The Good Literary Agency and has since moved to the DHH Literary Agency.
In March, writer, translator and artist Barokka will publish her third collection, amuk, which explores the impact of mistranslating a single word. Moreover, February will see the publication of Jenny Pagdin’s "powerful, sensitive and stark" debut poetry collection The Snow Globe, a first-hand experience of postpartum psychosis.
In April, the publisher will release Popular Song, a "highly inventive" debut from poet, teacher and translator Harry Man, winner of the Stephen Spender Prize and a Northern Writers Award, and previously shortlisted for a Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Cholmondeley Award-winning poet Tamar Yoseloff’s seventh collection, Belief Systems, will be published in June.
Roz Goddard, poet and finalist for the Moth Poetry Prize 2022, will return to Nine Arches Press to publish Small Moon Curve, an "intimate poetry memoir" collection in July. That month will also see the publication of poet and artist Jane Burn’s The Apothecary of Flight, a "heady flight into the art of poetry itself".
Wendy Pratt, Spelt magazine founder, creative writing facilitator and winner of the Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet competition, will publish Blackbird Singing at Dusk in September. Meanwhile, Tim Tim Cheng – a Scottish Book Trust Ignite fellow, a member of Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective and a mentee under the Roddy Lumsden Memorial Mentorship scheme – will publish The Tattoo Collector in October.
Laurel Prize-longlistee and former Bristol City Poet Caleb Parkin will return to Nine Arches in October to publish Mingle, a second collection of poems to follow up on his 2021 debut This Fruiting Body. Moreover, Self-Portrait With Family, a second poetry collection by the Clore Prize winner and Ledbury Poetry critic Amaan Hyder, will also be published in November.
As well as 10 single-author collections, Nine Arches Press will publish two further titles in 2024. Primers: Volume Seven will feature three new voices in contemporary poetry, selected and mentored by poet and novelist Katie Hale and chosen from the entries received for the bi-annual Primers mentoring and publication scheme. The featured emerging poets will be announced in November 2023. Autumn 2024 will also see poet Jessica Mookherjee’s first poetry collection, Flood (Cultured Llama), reissued in a new edition after Nine Arches Press acquired the rights to her previous work.
Nine Arches Press, a regional shortlistee for The British Book Awards’ Small Press of the Year 2019, achieved Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status as part of 2023-36 NPO funding programme. As well as publishing poetry, the press runs two poetry mentoring schemes, Primers and Dynamo. They are represented for trade sales and marketing by Inpress Books and their distribution is handled by BookSource UK.
Commane commented: “These books are compelling and vital. Each one has something unique to show us; they contain poems alive with life-force of songs and art and literature – and all the transformative power words have to illuminate our world and make connection with readers and audiences. None of this would be possible of course without the continued investment in our activity by Arts Council England through National Portfolio Organisation funding 2023-26, and we remain grateful for their support.”
