Danger: Left-wing sensibility at work

Our friends over at the internet magazine The Recusant have published an interesting and long review of The Night Shift. A small sample is extracted below. You can find the full review on http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/night-shift-review/4541311913. It is awkward to print out, what you do is copy it by covering the text and sliding down till it ends on the screen on the website, then simply pasting it into Word afterwards. But it is a bit fiddly. If reading on screen simply keep scrolling down.

"With so many contemporary poetry anthologies attempting to define a zeitgeist aesthetic of today via a relative handful of ‘academy’ graduates, it is heartening to read an anthology which takes a more diverse sweep of voices and styles to emphasize the timelessness of certain poetic themes. The Night Shift is an ambitious anthology – beautifully produced by Nottingham-based press Five Leaves in A5 hardback – themed around ‘night’, and comprised of three sections: ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (night shift work), ‘In The Forests of the Night’ (nocturnal animal kingdom), and ‘The Crumpled Duvet’ (insomnia). This is not therefore an anthology with a literary agenda; politically, there is a certain welcome left-wing sensibility at work, particularly in the in the first section, but this is par for the course with radical presses such as Five Leaves; this is essentially an anthology in the original sense of the word, a collecting together of poems across the literary canon, past and present, all linked by theme of ‘night’. There is a thoughtful Foreword by Welsh broadcaster John Humphrys, and three introductions by the editors to their respective sections."

Up all night

Busy at 4.35am on the night of Sunday 21st March? Thought not. In that case why not listen to Up All Night on Radio 5 with Jenny Swann and Andy Croft reading from The Night Shift. For their sake I am glad to say it is a pre-recorded programme, though some might say that is being a bit pathetic. People should suffer for their art. Those with other commitments at that time can find the programme via I player for seven days afterwards.

Finally made it to The Night Shift

"I have no idea of the statistics, but most poets who choose to write about the night seem to find their inspiration in town rather than country: the “starless and bible-black” town of Dylan Thomas; the Night Waitress of Lynda Hull “bitter with sleeplessness”; God speaking to Vernon Scannell “beyond the dark sky and its white rash of stars on a frosty night on Ealing Broadway”. But I have had another (almost) night job: milking cows on a farm in west Wales. There is real beauty in the wintry pre-dawn hour of a farm: the cows’ breath and sweat mingling in misty patches; the frost fringing trees and grass and the silence before the dogs wake and the work begins.

One day, when Today is a memory, I shall write about it. But there’s enough in this delightful anthology to last until then."

So writes John Humphrys in the introduction to our poetry collection The Night Shift which has finally made it to the printer after an age tracking down permissions. Lynda Hull, Dylan Thomas and Vernon Scannell were easy, but some stumped us. One we gave up on was a Middle English poem that had come out in a number of translations, over different editions, over different publishers. We were never quite able to work out who to ask for version we had found. Another American publisher had a long queue of people passing us on, from publisher to agent, from agent to publisher. Still, The Night Shift is in press. Thanks to all those writers who gave permission a long time back, and thanks to our patient editors Michael Baron, Andy Croft and Jenny Swann. And to anyone who has ordered the book... we get it back on Feb 12th. It has moved into a hardback, at the same price of £9.99.