Comments on: One man band

By: Damien G Walter

Damien G Walter — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:03:47 +0000

Small presses are often based on one individual. Is that a bad thing? http://literaturenetwork.org/?p=1660

By: wayneburrows

wayneburrows — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:36:15 +0000

As the conductor of just such a one-man band (well, two-man band, as we do have the excellent CJ Allen to organise the reviews) Staple Magazine, based here in Nottingham, I can say that small presses are among the most efficient organisations out there – how many other organisations in the arts or elsewhere have directors who do everything from open the post and comment on submissions to the accounts, design, editing and proofreading, right up to maintaining the mailing and subscription lists, marketing, forging partnerships and presenting contributors at public events? Of course, it's a system evolved out of financial necessity – as long as we have a few subscribers we can more or less survive, as the funding ebbs and flows. But Staple has survived three changes of editor, from Donald Measham and Bob Windsor (1982 – 2000) to Ann Atkinson and Elizabeth Barrett (1999 – 2007) and now me (2007 – ), becoming a very different beast each time, though (I like to think) retaining a certain continuity with its 30 year history, too. Others have achieved the same and the key, I suppose, is for the change to renew the institution, and hopefully take the old readers with it…I hope that if or when I hang up the Staple hat, we'll have established enough collaborations and working partnerships to find someone else insane enough to want to take the magazine on, and when they do, it won't be my Staple, any more than mine is Ann Atkinson's, or hers was Donald Measham's, but it will, I hope, still be recognisable as the same stapled A5 booklet put together in Matlock and named by Roy Fisher (“a small magazine is poems on either side of a staple”). We've retained the name Staple despite being perfect bound since about 1984, and nowadays venturing into fiction, essays and artwork (all legacies from Ann and Elizabeth's tenure). But you'll still find some of the same poets as appeared under Donald and Bob in our pages (and at least a few of their subscribers on our mailing lists) so it might all be a bit Trigger's Broom (three new brushes, three new handles – the same broom) but I hope Bloodaxe will survive Neil's retirement, and Comma or Anvil will carry on if Ra Page or Peter Jay find their interests drifting elsewhere. I'm still reading books from Faber nearly 40 years after TS Eliot's departure from Russell Square, after all, and if there's a harder act to follow than him, I'm not sure who it is.

By: wayneburrows

wayneburrows — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:36:15 +0000

As the conductor of just such a one-man band (well, two-man band, as we do have the excellent CJ Allen to organise the reviews) Staple Magazine, based here in Nottingham, I can say that small presses are among the most efficient organisations out there – how many other organisation in the arts or elsewhere have artistic directors who do everything from open the post and comment on submissions to the accounts, design, editing and proofreading, right up to maintaining the mailing and subscription lists, marketing and presenting contributors at public events? Of course, it's a system evolved out of financial necessity – as long as we have a few subscribers we can more or less survive, as the funding ebbs and flows. But Staple has survived three changes of editor, from Donald Measham and Bob Windsor (1982 – 2000) to Ann Atkinson and Elizabeth Barrett (1999 – 2007) and now me (2007 – ), becoming a very different beast each time, though (I like to think) retaining a certain continuity with its 30 year history, too. Others have achieved the same and the key, I suppose, is for the change to renew the institution, and hopefully take the old readers with it…I hope that if or when I hang up the Staple hat, we'll have established enough collaborations and working partnerships to find someone else insane enough to want to take the magazine on, and when they do, it won't be my Staple, any more than mine is Ann Atkinson's, or hers was Donald Measham's, but it will, I hope, still be recognisable as the same stapled A5 booklet put together in Matlock and named by Roy Fisher (“a small magazine is poems on either side of a staple”). We've retained the name Staple despite being perfect bound since about 1984, and nowadays venturing into fiction, essays and artwork (all legacies from Ann and Elizabeth's tenure). But you'll still find some of the same poets as appeared under Donald and Bob in our pages (and at least a few of their subscribers on our mailing lists) so it might all be a bit Trigger's Brush (three new brushes, three new handles – the same broom) but I hope Bloodaxe will survive Neil's retirement, and Comma or Anvil will carry on if Ra Page or Peter Jay find their interests drifting elsewhere. I'm still reading books from Faber nearly 40 years on from TS Eliot's departure from Russell Square, after all.