Tag: art

Publishing

Village Voices – celebrating art and poetry

Maytree Press

We are delighted to announce that we will be working with the newly formed Marsden Community Poetry group to bring you an anthology that promises to be one of the most entertaining reads of 2023.

Celebrating art and poetry from the diverse and inclusive communities of Kirklees and the South Pennines, Village Voices will be an inspiring collection of poetry and art that celebrates diversity, inclusivity, and equality. This is a post-pandemic anthology – a book that gives a voice back to our communities.

It’s often said that people just don’t read poetry. Well, Marsden Community Poetry want to prove them wrong. Remember, Marsden was the place where Poetry Pubs found fame and where the windows of village shops are often adorned with posters of poetry from all age groups, so perhaps it’s not a bad idea.

And if you didn’t already know, Marsden was home to our current Poet Laureate and also happens to be where Maytree HQ is based.

The anthology will be edited by a panel of acclaimed authors and poets selected by the group – please note that Maytree are not involved with the editorial process.

So, if you are a poet or an artist and you either live in the towns or villages of the South Pennines or have been inspired by lives, landscapes and stories of the area then now is the time to be part of this amazing new collection

To submit please follow these guidelines:

The anthology is aimed at a general audience.

Your poem:

Submit one original poem. Simultaneous submissions are discouraged as the editors and publishers are all volunteers and simply do not have time to change things once your poem has been accepted. Previously published poems are welcomed so long as the author retains copyright.

Although there is no specific theme, the editors are particularly interested in poems that promote and celebrate the diverse and inclusive communities of the towns and villages of the South Pennine.

Maximum line length not including title or breaks is 25. Longer poems may be considered, please send a cover note if this applies.

Illustrations:

Black and white only – sorry but we are unable to accept colour illustrations. The illustration should be Portrait, with space around. Do not draw a border.

Please do not sign – all images will be credited to the artists separately. Please send a high-resolution JPG of the image – original work is not required.

Please contact the project team if you are unable to produce a high quality image.

Copyright:

Copyright remains with the author and/or artist.

By submitting you agree to inclusion into the anthology and its publication and the selection process.

Selection process:

Please send your best poem. All work will be considered by the Marsden Community Poetry working group with final selection by our editorial team.

By submitting your work, you agree that the Editors reserve the right to publish or arrange broadcast of selected works. The right to use any included poems to further publicise the anthology is also retained.

Deadline:

Marsden Community Poetry are looking forward to receiving your work. Submissions will not be considered after midnight Sunday 22 January 2023

Submit:

Send your work to marsdencommunitypoetry@gmail.com

Publishing

Cover reveal – Maytree 40

Maytree Press

We are delighted to unveil the cover for our coming of age pamphlet, Olivia Dawson’s Unbottled.

Unbottled features the stunning artwork of Maytree favourite, Samantha Read who previously worked on Nicola Warwick’s collection, Naming the Land.

Unbottled is Olivia’s second pamphlet with Maytree and we’re absolutely delighted to be working on this thought provoking collection.

Originally titled, Spitting into Bottles after the poem, in this collection of poems we join the author on a journey of discovery as she digs beneath the truth to discover the roots of her ancestry.

Provisional release date is Friday 28 October 2022. Look out for news of launch events coming soon.

Spitting into Bottles

My mother’s mother has a lover
my mother’s mother’s lover is a puzzle
my mother’s mother leaves my mother
in a Home for awkward silences.

A mother-to-no-one loves
my mother’s dimples, takes my mother in
feeds her fresh baked cinnamon swirls
gives her a father-figure who whistles

but my mother searches and searches
finds her blood mother who tells her nothing
my mother searches and searches
finds half-of-a-much-younger-sister

who isn’t silenced. My mother’s half-
of-a-much-younger-sister doesn’t know
there’s another half, she doesn’t know a thing.
My mother’s other half, half looks

like me and my father wobbles
when he spots our sameness, warns me
off boys. I spit into a bottle to find
my mother’s mother’s runaway lover

I spit into another bottle to find the mother
of my mother’s mother’s lover, I want to discover
why I’m not blessed with long slim legs
and a thigh gap like no other.

About the Author

Olivia Dawson, originally from London, has also lived in France and Brazil.
She divides her time between London, and the Sintra Hills near Lisbon, and
is the Poetry Society Stanza rep for the Lisbon area. Recent poems have been
published in 14 Magazine, Eye Flash Poetry, Iamb – poetry seen and heard,
Alchemy Spoon, Magma, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Time & Tide
(Arachne Press) Coast to Coast to Coast, The Poetry Village, ROAM 1 of
The University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies. She has been longlisted
for the National Poetry Competition, shortlisted for Paper Swans Press
Pamphlet Competition, and shortlisted for Poetry on the Lake Competition.
Her debut pamphlet Unfolded was published by Maytree Press in 2020 and
Unbottled is her second pamphlet.

Publishing

Maytree 39 – cover reveal

Maytree Press

We are thrilled to release the cover for Maytree 39 featuring stunning new artwork by our friend Caroline Brown. Night after Night in the Quiet House by Sarah Hemings will be released on Thursday 6 October 2022 as part of our celebration for National Poetry Day 2022.

The collection was chosen from our open submission window in 2021 and will be Sarah’s debut pamphlet. The poems focus on the different methods used to process loss over time and how we can gradually realign ourselves to a new set of circumstances.

Kate Bush fans may recognise the title as a line from one of her earlier songs – no prizes but you’re welcome to comment below. You never know, we might get another Kate song to number one.

Sarah Hemings is a Poet and Chartered Librarian from Bristol. In 2019 she won First Prize in the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network Poetry Competition for her poem, ‘vestry’, and again in 2021 for ‘Eastertide’. Sarah is a member of The Poetry Society and Trowbridge Stanza and tweets at @SarahHemings1. From March-July 2021 she was mentored by Fiona Benson, under the Dialect Mentoring Scheme (a competitive scheme funded by Arts Council England).

You can find out more about the artist, Caroline Brown here Caroline Brown artist

Publishing, Theology

Maytree 36 – Magdalena

Maytree Press

For those who read our last post will have already had a sneak preview of the cover for Maytree 36 which features the photograph, Sunlit Tree by our very own, Roy Marshall. If you follow Roy on social media (and why wouldn’t you) you’ll know that as well as being a wonderful writer, poet, translator and editor, he’s also got a good eye for a great photograph.

Magdalena by Antony Christie started out about eight years ago as a reconstructed autobiography in verse of Mary Magdalene, based in part on the confusion of Maries in the New Testament, in part on the Apocryphal Gospels, and reinvigorated by a journey through the South of France that included sites associated with her.

The present text is an expansion of the original poems. The collection now includes
characters like the necromancer, who profits from superstitions and myths surrounding Mary who is herself, after death, still bound to her earthly existence, imprisoned in her own skull in the rituals that are associated with the annual procession it takes through the streets of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. The mention of a potent charm given to her by an admirer perhaps complicates the picture, as does her desire to find her own God reincarnated, which draws her, in the mid 20th century to Manubehn, the niece of Mahatma Ghandi.

So Mary is a character with whose humanity the reader can empathize, but also a mystic who takes out of body journeys, a devotee of her living God, an object of worship herself, a disembodied spirit, and through all her multi-faceted existence retains this humanity at her core.

Magdalena will be available from the 20 May 2022. Look out for news of launch events coming very soon.

About the author:

Antony divides his time between a farmhouse in the South Tyne Valley and a renovated one room school in Grey County in Ontario. His poetry has been published in magazines in England, Ireland and Canada, including Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Smiths Knoll, Other Poetry and Poetry Ireland Review, in anthologies, three pamphlets and two full length collections. He has read his work in co-ops, bookstores, village halls, libraries, a farmers’ market, and at local and international festivals, including StAnza and the last Hollingwood Wordstock. His latest pamphlet, The Archaeologist’s Daughter, was published by Wayleave in April 2019.

Publishing

Past, Present, Future

Maytree Press

As we mark the third anniversary of our first publication and look forward to the release of our thirty fifth book, we thought it would be a good excuse to celebrate all the wonderful collections we have had the privilege to work on over the past few years and offer you a little treat.

Looking back over our short life its incredible to see some of the amazing poets and artists we’ve worked with and come to know as our friends. It’s been a great adventure watching the Maytree family blossom.

The future looks just as exciting as we welcome our new editor, Roy Marshall to the fold, look forward to finalising work on our 2022 list, and start planning for 2023.

We will have a short open submissions window again in the autumn plus news of our portfolio awards and a new single poem award plus anthology.

Our cover reveals continue to make the news but we thought we would do something a little different for Maytree 36 and give you a sneak preview in our Future section.

Magdalena is the forthcoming collection from Antony Christie and features the image Sunlit Tree by our very own Roy Marshall. Magdalena is scheduled for release on the 20 May 2022 – look out for a more in-depth feature coming soon.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to our Newsletter on the sign up page here

Our 2022 Portfolio Award closes in just 22 days. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to be part of our story and see your work published later this year – enter now

And finally, all the above previously released titles are available from our online store here and to say thank you for your support we’d like to offer you 10% discount on all book orders for the rest of April. Please use the code April22 at the checkout.