Red Ceilings Press publishes postcard-size collections of poetry, and free eBooks
I’m not sure exactly when someone first mentioned “those beautiful, little” poetry chapbooks to me, but I had three of them in my hands by late last fall. And yes, they are little, postcard-size, measuring 4 inches by slightly less than 6 inches, and about one-eighth of an inch thick. I also have one of the Red Ceilings Press eBooks, but I’m not sure I can say I have it “in hand.”
The Red Ceilings Press may be one of the most unusual publishing enterprises I’ve come across. Based in the United Kingdom, it publishes small poetry chapbooks in print and eBook forms. A printed pamphlet is about 30 pages. The eBooks vary, but mostly run about the same length or shorter (the eBooks are published as pdf documents).
The press has been operating since 2010 with a very simple operating philosophy: “We love doing our chapbooks and that’s really our main thing, but we also publish the occasional eBook.” The approach to eBooks means no one involved is going to get rich, except perhaps the reader, metaphorically: “Our eBooks are available to download for free because we are nice like that.”
The printed chapbooks are by resident UK authors only; the eBooks include authors from “further afield.” The website says submissions are currently closed, but if and when they reopen, the guiding word for authors is “short,” as in “very short.” The printed books are also produced in limited (and hand-numbered) runs of 40 copies, and there are no second editions. Once a title sells out, it sells out.
I selected two authors from the list of printed chapbooks, Paul Brookes and Rupert Loydell. I was familiar with the writing of both. I reviewed one collection by Brookes here at Tweetspeak Poetry. And I’ve read likely dozens of poetry reviews by Loydell. Both are UK-based authors. The eBook I read is entitled Impossible I by a Chicago-based poet, David Eingorn.
Brookes has published several poetry collections and chapbooks; he’s also a tireless champion for other poets, posting interviews, reviews, and links to poetry. Based in Wombwell, England, in southern Yorkshire, he writes poetry as striking as it is unusual, utilizing images and metaphors that can be jarring until you understand what he’s doing. His 20-poem chapbook for Red Ceilings Press, Wolf Eye, includes this poem:
Our Gust Dims
in the full volume of dark,
a noise of clouds pierced
by the hooves of waves
that shape these shores
that mold the edge of home.
Home: this four chambered
Weather cycle and recycle.
Listen, you can hear the horses
Of memory with each falling crest
Of this heartbeat, this shaping pulse.
Rupert Loydell is a senior lecturer in English and writing at Falmouth University in Cornwall in the UK. He’s published several poetry collections, and his poems have been published in numerous literary magazines and journals. He’s edited several anthologies and serves as the editor of Stride Magazine. Loydell has also written extensively on poetry and writing and published many poetry reviews.
In 2020, Red Ceilings Press published Loydell’s Bomb Damage Maps: West London Blues, a chapbook of seven longish poems. His newest chapbook is Preloved Metaphors, a chapbook of 28 poems. Several are about poetry and the writing of poetry, including this one:
Blueprint
Everything needs the future
to reveal meaning. This is
the nature of poetic truth,
words which start to gather,
attract unwanted attention.
We can always create ourselves
from things we find in pictures
or in numerous other ways. Film,
performance, concept art, how
the cards are dealt or apples fall.
Large sections of the self need
to be rebuilt, there’s always
washing to be done. Behind
smooth surface, sensuous curves,
we take a private bow. (Applause)
The eBook Impossible I by Eingorn includes 27 poems, several of them about poem and several about Chicago. Eingorn is an assistant public defender in the Cook County Public Defender’s office. In addition to this chapbook, he’s also published a novella, To Make Good Again. This is one of Eingorn’s poems in the Red Ceilings chapbook:
All the Wines
Having drunk all the wines in the shop to know
death is not a Cabernet Sauvignon,
earthy and smoky
dark cherry lachrymose lady
draped in back of the tongue tannins,
a receding leathery apparition of ambient sleepwalking
in gest,
or a black suit and black tie guy.
Death is more of merlot,
An open-shirted Rhone.
Charon floating down a Russian river pinot noir
Not even a malicious malbec,
a serenade, Syrah, Syrah,
the taxi fare paid,
A soft landing
as the wine reenters the bottle from the glass.
Death has no stopper.
A rampaging box wine under $10
Without a nose.
The business model of Red Ceilings Press must be something akin to “labor of love.” The printed chapbooks have high-quality paper and covers with arresting designs. The eBooks have either beautiful multicolor covers or covers with a single color. Considerable effort and work has gone into producing these works of poetry. The poets gain some publicity and publishing credits; poetry readers get an economical glimpse of lesser-known poets in the U.K. and elsewhere.
A labor of love, indeed.
Related:
Poets and Poems: Paul Brookes and “As Folktaleteller”
Paul Brookes: A Poetry Champion Who Writes Poetry
Photo by Fabricio Smille, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.
How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
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L.L. Barkat says
Fabulous poems. What a great find, Glynn 🙂
I loved this metaphor:
“by the hooves of waves
that shape these shores”