This past year, I have been working on a book - an anthology of poems which includes many of the UK's leading poets and many of us who are less leading, but no less keen. It's a farewell to the Wenlock Poetry Festival, to be published on 1st September 2023, and it's proving to be a form of closure for that vibrant and popular annual event. In order to facilitate this publication, I have set up a new venture named 904 Press. This is because when I was chatting to my eldest son in a cafe in Hereford about the idea, he asked me how many publishers there are in the UK, and at that moment of Googling, there were 903. "I'll be the 904th," I said. When I searched the question again earlier today, I discovered I'd helped the answer grow to 906.
Ross Donlon who set up Mark Time Press thought more deeply about the name for his imprint, but we nevertheless arrived at similar places, I think. Mark Time publishes books that mark a place in time, just as 904 Press marks a very specific moment which, were it to be created today, would be 907 Press.
Publishing: it's all about the moments of decision, dear reader. My friend, Jen Hawkins, makes her moments of decision public on Wednesday 23rd August in the Poetry Pharmacy, Bishop's Castle, when she launches her pamphlet, Moth: Mark Time's latest arrival. Jen has been writing and performing her poetry in Shropshire for several years, and we have enjoyed hearing her read at events. Her friends have encouraged her to set them down more permanently. What publication of her pamphlet /chapbook /collection does is make these poems into a tangible decision, and that decision is to print them now, in a precisely chosen word order, and with details of punctuation, weight of paper, cover image, and price - what price poetry? - finalised.
Committing to commas, semi-colons, and cover layouts is an act of courage not demanded of us in the day-to-day virtual or verbal worlds where mistakes can (usually) be corrected at the touch of a few buttons, or with a cough and repetition of a line. It may not feel like it if you haven't done it yet, but be assured that the process by which Moth, The Bone Seeker (Thirza Clout), Body of Water (Emily Wilkinson), Lucidity (Ross Donlon), and I Buy A New Washer (Yours Truly) (all published by Mark Time) came to be in print form is a matter of precise, finite, and often late-at-night-squeezed-into-the-rest-of-life decision making. It's also a matter of kind discussion with our editor, Ross, of benefitting from his poetry wisdom and skills.
It's the finite, deadline bit that's so difficult: a form of existential angst, made manifest. Never mind that saying, the one about 'abandoning poems'; when you publish them on paper you have to release them carefully, tenderly, precisely, and, it may surprise some, soberly, and after lengthy and serious thought. This is because you release them to the possibility of changes of mind, misunderstandings, and (oh horror!) typos, as well as joy, understanding, and connection.
In the end, to be published is to allow oneself to be vulnerable. Jen Hawkins has taken this on board generously, letting her readers in to see her words and emotions, dancing 'like moths / around dying embered love / drawing ever closer'. She unpacks her 'pixelated patchwork / jigsaw of a heart' for us: a heart which includes sorrow and grief, as well as birdsong and a deep appreciation for ice cream...
Congratulations, Jen, for marking this place in your time. Graham Attenborough, GKA, whose friendship you celebrate in what I am very partially going to call my favourite poem in Moth, would have loved to have been here, and he would be so proud of you.
And congratulations to all of us, Mark Time authors and beyond, who commit ourselves to be known a little more fully, a little more deeply: to marking our time on paper.
