National Flash Fiction Day is Here!

Last year, National Poetry Day came and poets were delighted. One person who wasn’t so happy was Calum Kerr, a writer, editor and self-confessed advocate of the flash fiction form. He sought to change that and thus National Flash Fiction Day was born.

A Conversation with Ben Galley

With two hit novels at the age of 24 and no plans to stop, Ben Galley has proven himself to be a powerhouse of self-publishing talent. We caught up with the man himself to chat about fantasy fiction, the pitfalls of publishing and the merits of map-making.

Prose Poetry Vs Poetic Prose

Eleanor Perry delves into that grey space between poetry and prose.

Lately I’ve been thinking about prose poetry. It seems to me that, as a poetic form, it’s characterised by its lack of rules, which makes it both a wonderful and difficult thing to approach as a poet; wonderful because with such an absence of parameters it’s free to be explored without limit, but difficult for precisely the same reason – boundaries can be reassuring guidelines at times, and a navigating a place without them can be a daunting prospect.

Meanwhile…

Angry letters from fonts and malaise-filled haiku pepper this issue of meanwhile. Have a gander.

Adventures in Form – A Review

Adventures in Form, ed. Tom Chivers
reviewed by Hannah Rosefield

‘I hear ghostly Academics in Limbo screeching about form,’ wrote Allen Ginsberg in his notes to the 1959 audio recording of Howl. Lest we doubt that this is a bad thing, he follows up with ‘A word on the Academies: poetry has been attacked by an ignorant & frightened bunch of bores who don’t understand how it’s made… [and] wouldn’t know Poetry if it came up and buggered them in broad daylight.’

Ginsberg is not alone: many readers and writers of the past hundred years have regarded poetic form as the preserve of academics whose obsession with counting iambs and spotting spondees acts as a barrier to understanding. Adventures in Form: A Compendium of Poetic Forms, Rules and Constraints, beautifully produced by independent publishing house Penned in the Margins, is determined to prove form’s naysayers wrong. Featuring established (and establishment) names such as Ruth Padel and Paul Muldoon, as well as younger, lesser-known poets, it is a splendid demonstration of how the prioritization of form can provide a freedom absent from free verse.

Meanwhile…

This Meanwhile is a small press special. We went along to Publish and be Damned’s self-publishing fair at the ICA yesterday and here are some of the incredible exhibiting publishers that we think are well worth getting to know better.

In Numbers – a review

In Numbers: Serial Publications By Artists Since 1955
ICA 25/01 – 25/03

It is often hard to tell whether the curators at the ICA have a sense of humour. I like to think that this exhibition illustrates that they do have a little laugh at themselves every once in a while. Or at least I hope that they at least see the irony that they have inadvertently created.

Pigeon: Don’t Shoot the Messenger

Over the last few weeks I have had the privilege of working with the fantastic Pigeon Magazine, and for the next couple of weeks, will be displaying work alongside them at our show at Five Years Gallery.

Pigeon is the publishing body formed by Rebecca Field, Tamsin Devereux and Jake Evans. As practising artists in their own right, they crafted Pigeon as a curatorial platform, existing both in print and pixel, to cast a critical eye over the issues within the contemporary art world.

As part of their work for the Sites of Alternative Publishing exhibition, they are showing this delightful short video, which gives a snapshot of their collective practice.

In Pictures – Cass & Penguin: Design Your Own Book Cover

The blank ‘Design Your Own Cover’ editions from Penguin are certainly not new. (They brought out the first six titles in 2006.) However, it seems like the partnership with Cass Art is much newer indeed and they certainly missed a trick by not making this connection back then!
Cass, in partnership with Penguin, are running weekend workshops (for kids and adults alike) in which you can take and design a book cover in-store absolutely free. We went along to flex our arty muscles.

One Pun Too Many

With the release of the Et Al Podcast, we thought it only fair to give you some extra bits and bobs too. It’s Christmas after all. So, at the Annexe event, we ran a little competition in which the audience had to fashion some first-class puns. The topic was books cross with bands. We weren’t surprised to see that the Annexe audience is comprised of a lot of witty and erudite folk. We had so many brilliant responses it was hard to choose between them, but we decided on our top four:

Fantastic Mr. Fleet Foxes
Girl with a Pearl Jam Earring
Northanger Abba

The top prize went to:
All Quiet on the Westlife Front

Since that night the entries have resurfaced every so often and without fail every soul in Annexe HQ falls into fits of laughter. We realised it was cruel to keep all this mirth to ourselves so, in no particular order, after the jump are ALL the book/band puns from Annexe Presents…Et Al.