Colin Ward

The anarchist writer Colin Ward, who died on the night of 11th February, was indirectly responsible for the existence of Five Leaves. We’d met years before, and like several people I later met, I’d been vaguely collecting Colin’s Anarchy (first series), still the best anarchist magazine produced in this country. A small group of us in Nottingham, publishing as Old Hammond Press, brought out a couple of pamphlets by Colin, one on housing, one on William Morris’s ideas of work. But in 1994 I got so fed up waiting for Faber to bring out the paperback of The Allotment: its landscape and culture that I offered to buy the rights. Colin said that as long as his co-writer, David Crouch, was in agreement he’d be pleased if Faber were to hand them over, and if it helped, the co-authors would do without royalties as they were simply pleased to have the book available in paperback.
Well, thousands of copies later Colin never regretted his generosity, and as well being the first book published by Five Leaves (though initially, for the sake of any bibliographers reading, Mushroom Bookshop), for years The Allotment kept the press afloat. We went on to publish Colin’s Arcadia for All (co-written with Dennis Hardy), Talking Anarchy (with David Goodway) and Cotters and Squatters. Colin also wrote the introduction to our edition of The London Years by Rudolf Rocker, who of course he knew. Rocker in turn knew Peter Kropotkin, whose Mutual Aid had such an influence on Colin as a political thinker. I’d hoped that we’d manage to fit in an edition of Colin’s Goodnight Campers! (on the social history of the holiday camp) while he was still with us, and his wonderful book on Chartres that was only ever published for Folio Society members. They will appear.
Five Leaves was not his only publisher by any means. Freedom Press brought out - and kept in print - his classic Anarchy in Action and other books on housing, social policy and - in advance of his time - a book on ecological transport. Housing, environment, transport, architecture, unofficial uses of the landscape, the education of children - Colin’s subjects were always full of positive examples of the way some people live now, and the way we could all live later. He had no time for what he called tittle-tattle. Colin developed a kind of Wardite politics and a close and loyal following ranging from George Mombiot to young libertarians who saw that there was more to life than permanent protest.
There will be many full obituaries, in the broadsheet, the anarchist and the housing press in particular. There are so many things that could be mentioned here, but I’ll simply say that every conversation with Colin was rewarding, educational and fun. He was the most generous of people, strengthened by his many years with Harriet, an activist and writer in her own right. We have been proud to have worked with Colin over many years and will miss him.
Ken Worpole - another Five Leaves writer (who, like Colin, has been published by several other publishers) - will be fronting communications about any events and memorials. Let us know if you would like to be kept informed. Colin's funeral will be at 2.00pm on March 1st at Ipswich Crematorium. Our condolences to Harriet and the family.

States of Independence

A regional event
INDEPENDENT PRESS DAY
Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Oxford Road, Leicester
10.30am – 4.30pm, Saturday 20th March.
Independent presses from across the region (and some from around the country) will be on site, together with many regional writers whose work is published by large and small independent publishers. Join us for an hour or two or the whole day.
Open to all and free of charge.

Forty writers, mostly from the East Midlands, will be reading from their work at an events programme to accompany an equal number of independent publishers and writers' organisations staffing bookstalls and displaying their work.
Authors include nationally known figures including children's writers Berlie Doherty (twice winner of the Carnegie Award) and Chris D'Lacey, novelists Anthony Cartwright (Heartland, recently read on Book at Bedtime) and Rod Madocks (shortlisted for the ITV Crime and Thriller Awards) and poets Gregory Woods and Deborah Tyler-Bennett. We'll also be providing a Leicester launch for Maria Allen's first novel, launching the international poetry magazine Cleave and featuring talks on independent football magazines, the 1984 Miners' Strike and well known phrases and sayings.
Independent press editors taking part include Iron Press's Peter Mortimer on his “40 years before the mast” as a publisher, and Lynne Patrick from Crème de la Crime, probably the only female crime fiction publisher in the UK. Publishers, groups and magazines from the East and West Midlands and the North East in particular will be represented.
Organised by Five Leaves Publications in Nottingham and the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort Univeristy.
Printed programmes available from info@fiveleaves.co.uk, 0115 9895465. Web programmes: http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/

£694.05

In the scale of things, £694.05 is not a huge sum of money. This is the amount owed to Five Leaves by Borders/Books Etc following their Xmas closure. That's what they owe us for books taken, possibly even sold. We're not likely to get any of the money, nor any of the unsold books back. The people who are first in the queue for what the administrators managed to get for the assets (our assets) goes to the administrators, then - gosh, faint with surprise - the bankers. The Borders closure cost you money as well of course since Borders could not pay the statutory minimum redundancy pay so the taxpayer had to.
The blogs and The Bookseller in December and January were awash with concerns about the business practices that caused the closure. But what can you do? We have cut the expense account of the office cat and will make what everyone seems to call efficiency savings. But what we really want to do is burgle the house of Philip Downer, CEO of Borders, and take goods to the value of £694.05 because Borders certainly mugged us, and most other publishers too.

John Rety

I am sorry to find fellow editor John Rety, of Hearing Eye, has died. John was born in Hungary in 1930, coming to this country in 1947. Though he came to the notion of anarchism when he was 13/14 ("very late") he became seriously involved in the 1960s, becoming a member of the Committe of 100, and an editor of Freedom. He was a bohemian figure, a former partner of the writer Laura del Rivo, and was the first person to publish Colin Wilson, though he moved away from Colin Wilson as Colin moved to the right politically.

Since the 80s John was one of the key people at Torriano Poets and at Hearing Eye. He had an ability to pull in important readers to this scruffy little venue, none of whom were paid, and who were happy to rub shoulders with "readers from the floor" with all that meant. His press published Dannie Abse and others, actually about 200 publications in total, keeping them all in print. One of his treasures was the posthumous Selected Poems of AC Jacobs.

To everyone's amazement, given his anarchist views, John pitched up as the poetry editor at the communist Morning Star two or three years back, running a popular weekly poetry column which was collected in his Well Versed anthology, now in its second printing. He was thrilled by this, as it ran counter to his usual despairing cry that nobody ever wants to buy poetry.


John Rety would never win any well-dressed man competition. He was never the easiest person to have in a meeting but he did good work at all the organisations he worked with. Our condolences to Susan and Emily.

There's a world out there...

... and some parts of it are interested in what we do. So here's Dan Tunstall (Big and Clever) in Left Lion, a magazine in Nottingham for hip young people...
http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/id/2805

...and the hip late-middle-aged Mike Gerber (Jazz Jews) in Jewish News
http://www.totallyjewish.com:80/entertainment/features_and_reviews/

...and the hippest owner of a bus pass in the North East, Peter Mortimer (Camp Shatila) in Tynedale Life
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&pnum=&refresh=2j1JX09s0rG3&EID=830eed07-bd48-48b0-b54f-a06ab4cf5deb&skip=

... just don't mention the word hip in front of the Dundee crime writer Russel McLean (The Lost Sister), reviewed on CrimeSquad, or he'll make you need a replacement
http://www.crimesquad.com/reviews.asp?year=2010&month=1

A posting of no literary merit

One evening, a policeman came and told him…
"So begins Charles Reznikoff’s cycle of poems, Holocaust. It could be the beginning of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking…”). and what follows in Reznikoff is certainly a metamorphosis of sorts: the transformation of certain human beings into something lower than monstrous insects to whom all trace and privilege of humanity is denied. But Kafka’s world was metaphor, it was imagined. Reznikoff’s was a historical record. In fact it was quite precisely a historical record..." writes George Szirtes in his introduction to Five Leaves' edition of Reznikoff's Holocaust now in press. We'll have copies back in a couple of weeks.


The late Charles Reznikoff is not hugely known in this country, but Black Sparrow in the States kept his work in print. This book comprises verbatim witness records from the Nuremberg and Eichmanm trials turned into something like verse form. A book that is hard to read, we confess, but an important poetry documentary. We are proud to publish it here.