About Mulfran Press / News / Coming events
Mulfran Press is a new poetry press based in Cardiff, Wales. Mulfran publishes single-author poetry collections and pamphlets, as well as essay pamphlets on topics in poetics. Our postal address is: Mulfran Press, PO Box 812, Cardiff CF11 1PD. Email: queries@mulfran.co.uk
Mulfran Poetry launch Party, 7:30pm on Wednesday 16 November 2011
OXFAM Marylebone Bookshop, 91 Marylebone High St, London W1U 4RB
Helen Lovelock-Burke, Michael Arnold Williams, and Mulfran Press invite you to celebrate the publication of Helen’s book Dayship and Michael’s book The Acolytes. There will be readings from their books and by special guest poet Richard Price.
Lesley Saunders, poem 'Germ Theory' chosen for Poetry Society Autumn 2011 Members Poems.
The poem is here.
Submissions closed for now, forthcoming titles to be announced soon
We regret that until further notice, Mulfran cannot consider any manuscripts other than those already received or invited. We have many good submissions in hand, and will soon announce our publishing programme for 2012.
Mulfran author shortlisted for New Poetry Award
Maureen Jivani's Insensible Heart has been shortlisted for the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award 2010. This award, judged this year by Daljit Nagra, Tamar Yoseloff and Adam O'Rordan, celebrates poets' first collections. The winner was announced in August: Carrie Etters' The Tethers. The prize is organised by the London Festival Fringe in conjuction with Cegin Productions and Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour. See the Coffee-House Poetry web site for further information.
Some Languages Are Hard To Dream In launch in Cardiff
The sequence Some Languages Are Hard To Dream In (first published in No Doves) is now released as a pamphlet, number five in the Mulfran Miniatures series, accompanied by specially commissioned images by Christopher Hedley-Dent. Launched with an accompanying dance performance by Liza Wedgwood at the Glanfa Stage, Wales Millennium Centre, 6pm 11 July 2010.
Mulfran author wins TLS poetry competition
Peter Daniels won first prize in the 2010 TLS poetry competition with his poem "The Pump".
Windsor Bookshop stocks Mulfran
All Mulfran Press titles are currently in stock at Windsor Bookshop 9A Windsor Road, Penarth CF64 1JB.
Launch of Mulfran Miniatures, Insensible Heart and Ashes of a Valleys Childhood
A Friends Meeting House in East London hosted the first launch of the first four in the Mulfran Miniatures series of illustrated pamphlets, as well as Maureen Jivani's Insensible Heart). The room was full to overflowing, and all the readers received an enthusiastic response.
A further reading on 8th June 2010 at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, launched Ashes of a Valleys Childhood by Lynda Nash (illustrated with period photographs from the '60s and '70s) and the pamplets: Roy Morgans' The Sychbant, illustrated by Marion K V Kenning; Peter Daniels' Work & Food, illustrated by Moira Coupe; Malcolm Lewis' The Hard Man, with two Ceri Richards drawings as illustration; Maureen Jivani's My Shinji Noon (first published by Mulfran in Insensible Heart), illustrated by Jill Schoenmann.
An audience of about 50 enjoyed an exciting mix of talents from South Wales, Trethomas, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Penarth and further afield. This event was supported by Academi.
The launch of Duncan McGibbon'sThe Consolations was held
Saturday 9 January 2010 at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution (BRLSI) in Bath.
Light refreshments & a glass of wine or soft drink were provided courtesy of Mulfran Press, and books were sold at the special launch price of £7.00. Although the weather prevented a number of people from being able to attend, there was a good crowd and it was a most enjoyable occasion.
buying Mulfran Press books and pamphlets
Mulfran books and pamphlets are sold through bookshops; if not in stock, bookshops can order them for customers via TeleOrdering. Mulfran Press books are also listed on Amazon, or you can buy books from us by post at Mulfran Press, PO Box 812, Cardiff CF11 1PD. When ordering direct from us, please enclose a cheque drawn in British Pounds Sterling to Mulfran Press for the full cover price; we do not charge postage. Facilities for ordering from us online will be provided in the future.
Mulfran Press books are also available from Blackwell. For more information, see Blackwell Bookshop Online and search for any of our books. On the full [via title or "More" link] page for any of our books is a link for Mulfran Press that will bring up a list of all our books offered by Blackwell.
If you require further information about this or other matters, send your questions to queries@mulfran.co.uk.
the kinds of poetry that
interest us at Mulfran Press
We like — and read — a very wide variety of poetry, much of it contemporary, and most of it from the 20th and 21st centuries; we also appreciate the poetry of earlier periods, and have an interest in the poetry of other languages, usually as represented in translation. We provide examples and recommended reading. Have a look!
the name of the press
Mulfran (pronounced milvran) is a Welsh word for cormorant.
Mulfran Press is in the docks area of Cardiff, where numerous cormorants can be observed diving, perching and spreading their wings. To get a feel for how Mulfran sees cormorants, read Amy Clampitt's poem, "The Cormorant in its Element" in the entry for cormorant on Encycplodedia Jr.
Recent/forthcoming from Mulfran Press
Out November 2011
Dayship by Helen Lovelock-Burke
80 pages, £9.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-14-8
Available soon from bookshops, online & direct from us.
Helen Lovelock-Burke grew up on the American Atlantic seaboard and has lived in England for much of her adult life. In Dayship, she pays careful attention to what matters most, as well as noting life's occasional sheer strangeness. Some of these poems come from a perspective that can perhaps only be achieved in late maturity. Time — its moments seemingly held in suspension, or as it passes, or the lost times, or those held in memory's safe deposit — is a recurring theme. And where other than here will you find the cross-generational autobiography of a wedding dress?
More about Helen Lovelock-Burke and Dayship to come.
Out October 2011
The Acolytes by Michael Arnold Williams
104 pages, £9.50, ISBN 978-1-907327-13-1
Available from bookshops, online (for example,
Blackwell's will order from us for you) & direct from us.
The courageous and truthful poems in The Acolytes explore the overlapping experiences of family life, love life, and in particular the life and love of science and of art. Inevitably, war touches these lives at many points: a child's experience of the Second World War in the first section; in the central section, the ambiguity and early riskes of turning atomic weapons research toward the saving of lives; in the final section, with the poems capturing old men's memories of the Great War.
More about Michael Arnold Williams and The Acolytes to come.
Out September 2011
Two new Mulfran Miniatures:
Just Like That by Crystal Jeans with illustrations by Emrys Williams
Eight Pegs by Tony Curtis with drawings by Rozanne Hawksley
Out July 2011
Aria | Anika translations & new poems by Sudeep Sen
188 pages, £11.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-03-2
The Indian edition, Aria, was published by Yeti Books / Monsoon Editions, won the inaugural A K Ramanujan Translation Award, and was named as one of the Best Books of the Year by Outlook magazine, as one of the 'Notable Books of the Year 2009' by Mint / Wall Street Journal and in Frog Books Blogspot. See also a detailed review in Molossus. And another in Himal. This UK edition is substantially expanded to include over fifty new poems in English by Sudeep Sen himself, powerful poetry of love, loss, celebration, grief, art, dance, politics and history.
[More about Sudeep Sen and Aria | Anika].
Black Mountains: Poems and images from the Bog–Mawnog Project
poems by Christopher Meredith
images by Elizabeth Adeline, Lin Charlston, Kirsty Claxton,
Deborah Aguirre Jones, & Pip Woolf
28 pages, £4.50, ISBN 978-1-907327-16-2
These poems and images respond to the beautiful fire-scarred and fragile landscape
of the upland peat bogs
of the Black Mountains in Powys.
[More about Christopher Meredith and Black Mountains to come].
Out 10 April 2011
After Gilgamesh by Jenny Lewis
64 pages, £7.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-10-0
The earliest story, written thousands of years ago, still has echoes in today's world. In an epic verse drama for youth theatre, Captain Robbie Roberts lies injured in hospital and flits between is life as a soldier in Iraq amd and the mythic world of Mesopotamia. Has anything really changed in 4,000 years?
[More about Jenny Lewis and After Gilgamesh]
Mulfran Miniatures
This series of small-format pamphlets (following on from the Vennel Press Brief Pleasures series) includes taster selections by Mulfran poets, by poets who have not yet published a full collection, and by already well-known poets, alongside artists whose images inspired, are inspired by, or respond to the poems.
Work & Food by Peter Daniels, illustrated by Moira Coupe
My Shinji Noon by Maureen Jivani, illustrated by Jill Schoenmann
The Hard Man by Malcolm Lewis, with two Ceri Richards drawings as illustration
The Sychbant by Roy Morgans, illustrated by Marion Kenning
Some Languages Are Hard To Dream In
by Lesley Saunders, with images by Christopher Hedley-Dent
All titles £4 each, post-free direct from Mulfran Press. As with Mulfran books, also available from Blackwell Bookshop Online, from amazon.co.uk and from Windsor Bookshop in Penarth. Further titles are under development from Tony Curtis and Crystal Jeans; watch this space for announcements. More about Mulfran Miniatures.
Mulfran books 2009-2010
The Consolations by Duncan McGibbon
65 pages, £7.95, ISBN 978-1-907327-00-1
Available from Amazon, bookshops, & direct from us.
With its epithet that the heart should speak, Duncan McGibbon explores the consolations of the poor, of the story, of the fallen.
These explorations take the poet on journeys from Our Lady of
Geneva through the desolate Bernese Oberland, through
Haworth under an eclipse and through the spiritual landscape of
Saint Seraphim’s Niszny Novgorod, before returning to Our Lady
of Bruges and the heart of his family. More about Duncan McGibbon and The Consolations.
Ashes of a Valleys Childhood by Lynda Nash
56 pages, £7.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-01-8
Available from Amazon, bookshops, & direct from us.
Also sold at Castle Stores, Laugharne.
This first collection of poems by Lynda Nash is selected from a broader body of work to focus on narratives that individually and collectively illuminate what it was like to grow up in the South Wales valleys in the 1960s and '70s. The stories are grounded in the lived experience of the poet and other children growing up in this particular time and place. More about Lynda Nash and Ashes of a Valleys Childhood.
Insensible Heart by Maureen Jivani
66 pages, £7.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-02-5
Available from Amazon, bookshops, & direct from us.
Maureen Jivani’s poems explore the roles of art, faith, sexuality, aging, and politics in history and in contemporary society. She draws on her experiences as a nurse to reflect on the distortions which she has observed: loss of control, faith, body-parts, all feature heavily in her work. There is a celebration and dry wit in her poems too and a delight in the absurd. Ultimately it is the world of the troubled and the estranged where she most makes her poetry felt in concise, stark or surreal images; where nature is most revealed; where the undercurrent of love and fragility most pervade. [More about Maureen Jivani and Insensible Heart]
No Doves by Lesley Saunders
60 pages, £8.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-08-7
Available February 2010
from Amazon, bookshops, & direct from us.
Metamorphic rather than anthropomorphic, these poems depict the 'creatureliness' of all existence: how distinctions between the non-human and human worlds dissolve as you look at them – rather like 'the act / of walking through walls'. Yet the book as a whole is really a meditation on the notion that 'the only thing to be had on earth / is love, leafless, wintering'. [More about Lesley Saunders and No Doves]
Mulfran Contentions
Mulfran Contentions, an essay series covering a variety of topics in poetics, will begin to appear in 2012.