There are few, if any, more transient and precarious forms of publishing than small-press poetry magazines. But it still came as a shock when Ambit closed its doors in February this year. Founded in 1959, Ambit’s storied past had featured everyone from William Burroughs to Stevie Smith, from Linton Kwesi-Johnson to Carol Ann Duffy. But... Continue Reading →
Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers by Emma Smith
In his Cruiskeen Lawn column in the Irish Times, Flann O’Brien once proposed a book-handling service for ‘illiterate, but wealthy, upstarts so that [their] books will look as if they have been read and re-read by their owners’. At the entry level, ‘Popular Handling’, this would involve dog-earing four leaves in each volume and the... Continue Reading →
Book Parts, edited by Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth
In 1723 the London bookseller Thomas Graves published a 12-page pamphlet entitled The First of April. Written in praise of the author of a recent poem named Ridotto, or Downfal of Masquerades, it comprises a title page, a six-page dedicatory epistle, and The First of April itself, a three-page poem. There is an an attractive... Continue Reading →