One man band

Small presses are often based on one individual. Is that a bad thing? Ross Bradshaw considers.

Here’s some names. Arc – Tony Ward, Iron – Peter Mortimer, Smokestack – Andy Croft, Anvil – Peter Jay, Waywiser – Philip Hoy, Shoestring – John Lucas, Menard – Tony Rudolph, Hearing Eye – John Rety, Comma – Ra Page, New Departures – Michael Horovitz, Rockingham – David Perman…

Given that this is on a literature website, even if you don’t know any of the above you can probably guess that the fist of each paring is a publisher, indeed, a small publisher. You can probably guess that each of the names is the editor. In fact all of those mentioned are founders of those presses and still run them. Six of the presses have been going for over thirty years, forty years some of them; two or three of them about half that with only Comma and Smokestack going a few years only, but both are established. All of the presses listed publish poetry. Comma, Shoestring, Menard publish other material too.

Some of the above have more than one person involved now, most have been one man bands since they started. Between them they have been responsible for publishing hundreds of books, hundreds of writers, many for the first time and some throughout their career. None of their founders has made themselves rich though all are not without influence in the world of literature, in cases way beyond their small press work. All have given strong editorial direction to their presses. There is a tradition of these sort of presses. It is a tradition that works. I’m not suggesting that this is the only way to run small presses but it is a way that works. The list could be much, much longer.

But what of the bigger poetry presses? They do have more people involved than simply their founders, but it is hard to imagine Bloodaxe without Neil Astley or Carcanet without Michael Schmid or – let’s go international – City Lights without Lawrence Ferlinghetti, or imagine that New Directions could have survived so long without James Laughlin. Let’s go backwards… Adam International Review – Miron Grindea, or into other languages… Loshn un Lebn – Avrom Stencl. But I’ve made the point

Collectives, management committees, well-funded organisations, career minded literature professionals all have their place, but you can see how much of the non-commercial literature scene relies on hard working individuals with dogged and long term commitment. No false modesty here, I can be a bit dogged at Five Leaves too.

But what happens when we have to give up the ghost, or worse, become one? There is no doubt that the The London Magazine and Stand suffered very badly when Alan Ross and Jon Silkin went to that great editorial meeting in the sky. Both lost their influence and sales. That position may be reversed (and The London Magazine is now under a new, much younger editor) but are they really the same magazines/publishing houses as they were? The alternative is simply to close, as Peterloo did recently (though thankfully its founder and editor Harry Chambers is still with us). It would have been impossible to imagine Peterloo without Harry Chambers or, say, New Beacon without John La Rose (although the New Beacon Bookshop sustains).

But if such long term projects do close, they leave room for others to come along. Having a succession plan is not necessarily a good thing. Let someone else start up their own press, with all the joy, excitement and long hours that come with being the founder. Create something in their own image without having anybody saying “It’s not like it was when XXXXX was the editor…”

One more point – and I’ll come back to small presses in a later article – where are the women? When I wrote “one man band” I used that word with care. Being a small press publisher is mostly a man’s job. There might be reasons for it. Maybe all the editors above have a little woman in the background doing the shopping and bringing up the kids, or maybe, like trainspotting, running a little press is something men are particularly attracted to. It would be dead easy to double or triple the list above of influential long standing small presses set up and run by men. But women? Lilian Mohin at Onlywomen comes to mind, there since 1974, but damn few others. Maybe a flood of emails will prove me wrong or at least argue the case.

But that might be changing. Here in Nottingham Candlestick Press and Pewter Rose, both set up recently, have women founders and editors, and the current editor of The London Magazine is a woman. I hope they will be around in thirty years and be surrounded by other presses run by women. Though somehow I doubt trainspotting will ever catch on among people of the female persuasion.

Supported by Writing East Midlands

Ross Bradshaw runs Five Leaves Publications, the region’s “biggest small press” and jointly organises Lowdham Book Festival. For ten years he was Nottinghamshire’s Literature Development Officer, and, earlier, spent seventeen years working in a radical independent bookshop.