The first, and fairly simply produced, publication. Well, you have to start somewhere… John Welch has a way of catching the shifting ambiguousness of events and holding them in a kind of suspension, a mist of fragments in which the perceiver and the perceived can’t be separated from each other and form a surprising whole. They are graceful and original poems and deserve a wide reading. Geoffrey Adkins, Limestone.

A set of variations using a deliberately restricted vocabulary, by a poet whose work at this time was characterised by wide-ranging and radical experiment. Shortly afterwards he was to found the pioneering Performance Art group ‘The Theatre of Mistakes’.

Eight poems, by a poet and historian ­ a major work, ‘Republics, Nations and Tribes’ is forthcoming from Verso. And, significantly, it is Martin Thom’s ‘voice’ that is distinguished. ‘All raging things should be on the wing / were there a storm brewing tonight / it would be called ‘political engagement’. Adam Clarke-Williams, Perfect Bound.

A recurrent use of cliche, of commonplace. Exposed to their poetic load they re-appropriate their meanings, their inherent ambiguities…. and slowly, in these poems, we can see a direct statement shaping itself, the alibis accounted for, and leaving a knowledge of possible direction coiled back on itself, a whip at rest. Bill Bennett, Perfect Bound.

Five line drawings by painter and illustrator Amanda Welch whose work was recently shown at Diorama Arts (London) and Rising Sun (Reading). The drawings are accompanied by five short poems by John Welch.

Reviewing Shepherd’s collection ‘Evidences’, where this sequence was subsequently reprinted, Christopher Hope wrote, in the London Magazine: ‘W.G.Shepherd’s poems are that rare blend: thoroughly disciplined yet unrelentingly experimental.’

A group of ten sonnets that were reissued in ‘Out Walking’ (Anvil 1984).

‘The game proceeds by spreading people’s minds among each other.’ wrote Lowenstein in his introduction. ‘A joke book rather than an oracle, it differs from the “I Ching” in all sorts of perfectly obvious ways…’

A quite remarkably well-produced volume with Philip Crozier’s cover and Chaloner’s first book since ‘Chocolate Sauce’ (Ferry 1973)… a small press masterpiece. Perfect Bound.

Now celebrated as a novelist, author of ‘White Chappel Scarlet Tracings’ and ‘Downriver’, this long poem appeared at a time when Sinclair’s poetry enjoyed an enthusiastic following as part of the poetic revival of the late Sixties and early Seventies.

Seventeen poems that are the record of a journey across the United States undertaken as part of his work as a professional naturalist. His writing is characterised by a remarkable blend of scientific precision and poetic innovativeness. Simms describes himself as ‘owing much to modern poets mainly, including MacDiarmaid, Bunting, Mottram, some North Americans…’

A witty and elegant short sequence, by a poet whose work has not apparently surfaced elsewhere.

…contains four poems which further develop Welch’s picture of the modern city. Here one is struck not only by the originality of the juxtapositions Welch provides, but by the imaginative richness of the language he uses… Tim Dooley, Aquarius.

A sequence that was reprinted in the author’s collection ‘Blood and Dreams’ (Reality Street 1992); here published alongside a sequence of eight drawings by the distinguished painter Ken Kiff, most recently painter-in-residence at the National Gallery.

A remarkably interesting series of open-form poems… using elements of Freudian theory and the terminology of American writing on contemporary sexual politics. Time Out.

A powerful poem by an American poet, inspired by the great Slave Revolt led by Nat Turner in 1831.

A sequence that reflects this poet’s longstanding interest in improvised or ‘free’ music. The starting point was ‘Company Week’, a week of musical events at the ICA in 1977. But while the music, and the musicians, are a source to the book, it is not to be thought of solely as a book ‘about’ music.

An energetic sequence by an American poet and novelist who divides his time between this country and the US where he is now well-established as a novelist.

This sequence was Ralph Hawkins’ first collection; widely published since then, he is currently one of the editors of the magazine ‘Active in Airtime’.

An early publication by this widely published poet.

First publication of a collection of poems written for the most part in 1966 and 1967 which reflect the poet’s concern with visual material, and which were later collected in ‘All Where Each Is’ (Allardyce Barnett 1985). In the Sixties Andrew Crozier founded the ground-breaking Ferry Press.

First full length collection by this poet. …suggestiveness, quiet resonance and an intriguing movement of mind and sensibility in which the reader is curiously implicated. James Sutherland-Smith uses language not to retail but to take possession of his experience. PN Review.

A group of poems, ‘from notes made at the performances’, that reflect on the work of the Performance Art Group ‘The Theatre of Mistakes’.

A collection of short poems by a poet whose work is often grouped with the ‘Cambridge School’; in the early eighties he was one of the founders of the publishing imprint Allardyce Barnett, publishers of major collected editions of a number of these poets.

A collection of poems by a young London-based poet whose work had not previously appeared in print.

This narrative satire sketches the rapacities that characterized urban life in the 1980’s through the persona of a dispossessed ‘holy drinker’: ‘he sought the wholly good object. / Once, he thought, he had seen it, / under wraps, on the back of a lorry, addressed to Tipton’. The Many Press also publish Nigel Wheale’s ‘The Plains of Sight’ (1989) and ‘Phrasing the Light (1994).

Peter Robinson’s first full-length collection; subsequent collections have appeared from Carcanet. Like a conviction forming itself from doubts, it grows into something understood between us, a humane arrangement of the air… ‘Overdrawn Account’ is a sterling achievment. Eric Griffith, PN Review.

First publication of a sequence which the Many Press subsequently issued as part of a full-length collection ‘Filibustering in Samsara’ (see above).

The poems in this collection were subsequently published in Welch’s full-length collection ‘Out Walking’ (Anvil 1984). Reviewing that collection, Rob Sheppard wrote in PN Review, ‘A considerable and consistent achievment… The poems abound in intelligent reflection.’

A short sequence and a long poem, the sequence being subsequently collected in ‘Out Walking’ (Anvil 1984).

Simms collection ‘Voices’ had previously appeared from the Many Press (see above); this group of poems show further evidence of his freshness and exactness of perception, here complemented by Steve Herne’s graceful drawings.

In 1993 the University of California Press published Lowenstein’s collection of Inuit stories with commentaries; this was the first publication of a section of this material.

Subtitled a ‘poem in four movements’, this work shows Shepherd at his most inventively experimental.

Writing in the PN Review of an earlier work by this poet, David Trotter said, ‘Certain contemporary writings simply cannot be read unless one is prepared to stop examining the origins of language and ‘follow where it is going’… Rod Mengham’s writings are so exhaustively transcursive that there can be no question of stabilized content. Flows of meaning surge, hesitate, are supplanted by internal investments from elsewhere…’

Peter Middleton’s ‘The Inward Gaze: Masculinity and Subjectivity in Modern Culture’ (Routledge) appeared in 1992; the poems in this collection reflect many of the same interests in the area of gender issues and new currents in literary criticism.

First publication by a poet whose work has appeared in two further collections from the Many Press (see below).

Translations published shortly after Sereni’s death, to coincide with the 1983 Cambridge Poetry Festival, where he was to have read. There is no doubt about his greatness, and the first translations are just appearing, like the blossoms of a late spring. Peter Levi, The Guardian.

A short sequence, by a poet whose work was described by Peter Porter as ‘Fresh clever, humane and dandified…’ An exquisitely stylish modernist…(his poems) dazzle with lexical wealth and visual invention, deliberately challenging readers who expect to find in poetry warming echoes of another’s ‘felt experience’ or a characteristic and reliable voice. Tim Dooley, Argo.

Sutherland-Smith worked for a number of years in the Arab world; these poems are set in Libya. Sutherland-Smith moves from the local causes of a real terror to an evocation of a more wide-ranging version of the same phenomenon, a fantasia of the unreliable where personal and national identities are on the verge of disintegration. Tim Dooley, Argo.

…sophisticated attempt to come to grips with experience, in its juxtapositions of subjective with subjective, in order to arrive not at an impossible objectivity but at least a sense of what stands in its way. Yann Lovelock, Acumen.

This was Ruth Padel’s first collection; subsequent collections have appeared from Hutchinson and from Bloodaxe. Ruth Padel fuses the arcane and the luminous into a single harmony…a whiplash force is packed into lines… that continue to move and sound beyond the final letter. Kevin Andrews, The Athenian.

A second collection (see above) from a poet whose fresh lyrical impulse is combined with a continuing preoccupation with the topography of inner London, the City and the East End.

Peter Tingey’s covers are a notable feature of a number of the above publications. He is an artist and printmaker who studied at Camberwell School of Art and has since worked in most of the print and visual media. The covers he has designed have been mostly printed by him, using a Victorian ‘Albion’ printing press, at his home in southeast London.