CATALOGUE 2020 WRECKING BALL PRESS

Since 1997 Wrecking Ball Press has published high-quality, cutting-edge literature, building a national and international reputation. This reputation is based on a commitment to connecting the most innovative and accessible novels and poetry with a readership not traditionally associated with literature. Wrecking Ball Press has a strong record of discovering exciting first time writers, many of whom have gone on to have further commercial and critical success with larger publishers.

For more information visit www.wreckingballpress.com Take Me Up The Lighthouse Use Words First Dean Wilson Various

£10 £10 Pages: 76 Pages: 184 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-9031107-1-3 ISBN: 978-1-9160523-1-4 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.6cm Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 1.5cm Released: 29.01.2020 Released: 27.09.2019

Dean Wilson: Hull’s fourth best and Withernsea’s second best Humanity explored through poetry. Twelve poets put their words poet, daily collector of pebbles and an enigma wrapped in rhyme. first. BBC Radio 1Xtra and Asian Network teamed up with BBC Since his relocation to a cliff-edge residence, Dean’s creative Contains Strong Language for Words First, a scheme aimed at juices have been flowing faster than the Humber into the North finding the best emerging spoken word talent in the UK. Sea and, inspired by his Holderness surroundings, he’s been writing furiously. Take Me Up The Lighthouse is the result. Open USE WORDS FIRST is a collection of 12 poets from Words First up and enter the wonderful world of Mr Wilson. brought together in a brilliant anthology edited by Jude Yawson, co-writer of Stormzy’s Rise Up: The Story So Far and contributor to the SAFE anthology edited by Derek Owusu.

Exploring themes of identity, connectivity and mobilisation, USE WORDS FIRST brings together eclectic styles and people all exploring humanity in their own unique ways. This is a snapshot of some of the struggles, inspirations and muses of young Britain today expressed through poetry that spans from the personal to the political and is always full of beauty and power. I am both stranger Coketown and of this place Barney Farmer

£5 £12 Pages: 68 Pages: 200 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-903110-72-0 ISBN: 978-1-903110-68-3 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.5cm Dimensions: A5 Released: 27.09.2019 Released: 01.11.2019

Poems from Indonesia and the UK by Rufus Mufasa, Irma Pasts remembered, Agryanti, Billy Letford, Mario F. Lawi, Roseanne Watt, Jamil pasts forgot, Massa. pasts denied, passed are not. The Indonesia – UK Poetry Indigenous Language Exchange is a project conceived by the British Council, Makassar International When childhood friends meet again to reminisce and compare Writers’ Festival, Contains Strong Language and Wrecking Ball scars a fresh wound waits just around the corner. One rainy night Press to enable cultural and linguistic exchange between poets at the wrong end of town, and a pub crawl along Memory Lane from East Indonesia and the UK. takes a hard right down a dark dead end in Barney Farmer’s second novel, Coketown. This project also celebrates UNESCO’s Year of Indigenous Language. This project is part of the broader programme of Illustrated by Lee Healey. events for the Indonesia Market Focus at London Book Fair and is supported by the Indonesia Ministry of Education and Culture, the Indonesia Agency for Creative Economy (Bekraf) and the Indonesia National Book Committee. Bathwater WITH Vicky Foster Dean Wilson

£10 £5 Pages: 54 Pages: 20 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-903110-65-2 ISBN: Dimensions: 21 x 14.5 x 0.7cm Dimensions: 26 x 14 x 0.5cm Released: 26.03.2019 Released: 11.12.2018

Vicky Foster is one very capable writer and Bathwater is a A magazine of eleven poems inspired and written in Withernsea very personal story. Using her own real-life experience of what with stunning photographs by Graham Scott of Human Design. happens when violence spills over into family life, Bathwater is a Created after Dean bumped into Graham and Shane Rhodes gripping, of Wrecking Ball Press. Dean was raving about Withernsea and ever-twisting, often moving, somewhat shocking and often ago- told them about the poems he’d written there and said he had a nising piece of work. Rather than a cathartic over-share, however, stapler and knew how to use it and was planning to self-publish Foster goes way beyond writing what she knows in order to craft a pamphlet. Graham and Shane had other ideas, and WITH was something that is simultaneously hard-hitting and poetic. She has born. written a work of literary beauty, despite the harsh and uncomfort- able subject matter, combining prose, poetry and dialogue. And here it is. The beauty and mystery of Withernsea brought to you in a lucky bag with seven gifts, including a sixpence and a Vicky Foster was the recipient of The Imison Award 2020 at the bingo card dobbed personally by Dean. BBC Audio Drama Awards 2020 for Bathwater. She Wrote Her Own Eulogy Nosebleeds Shirley May Isaiah Hull

£10 £10 Pages: 108 Pages: 124 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-9031106-3-8 ISBN: 978-1-9031106-4-5 Dimensions: 26 x 14 x 1.3cm Dimensions: 26 x 14 x 1.3cm Released: 26.09.2018 Released: 28.09.2018

Shirley May’s She Wrote Her Own Eulogy takes the reader on a Isaiah Hull’s Nosebleeds is visceral and raw, a voice far older than journey, the landscape of Kent and Manchester brought to vibran- the poet’s young years, exploring family, life, and the real world. cy via Jamaica. It is a twisting road, the displaced lives making Hull’s writing is soul-searching and down to earth, Nosebleeds new communities on strange soil, the stories kept and told and an exploration of expression, traversing emotion and form. It is shared. It is wisdom, it is memory, and it is future and hope. hard-hitting poetry, written to be spoken aloud but making the transfer to the page with remarkable ease and clarity. Spit & Hiss Earwigging Mike Watts Dave McGowan

£10 £12 Pages: 116 Pages: 110 Cover: Paperback Cover: Hardback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-903110-57-7 ISBN: 978-1-903110-39-3 Dimensions: 21 x 14.5 x 1.7cm Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 2.3cm Released: 06.08.2018 Released: 21.11.2018

Mike Watts’ down-to-earth poetry is compelling and varied, Earwigging is a journey, never lingering for too long in any one covering all manner of sins in language both beautiful and place. It is the written equivalent of walking through a train station harrowing. Spit & Hiss is visceral, bold, tempered with an or waiting for a friend in a pub, conversations drifting in and out of intricacy of linguistic divide and form that may be read and re-read earshot, only ever in part and neither beginning nor resolved. It is without encroaching mundanity, and leaves the reader thinking, “I the overheard world. It is poignant, it is as unreal as only reality know that feeling.” can be. It is hilarious.

“The poems of Mike Watts come right off the streets and meet the “This is the real stuff. Stories from and about the street, from the reader square on. In their brevity they have much to say about the soft belly of hard places. Stories that make you wince, laugh and human condition.” – Neeli Cherkovski wonder. A great collection from a writer of wit and talent.” – Kit de Waal J SS Bach Exire Martin Goodman Helen Mort

£14 £12 Pages: 300 Pages: 110 Cover: Hardback Cover: Hardback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-903110-62-1 ISBN: 978-1-903110-59-1 Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 2.7cm Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 1.7cm Released: 06.03.2019 Released: 10.09.2018

J SS Bach is the story of three generations of women from Exire is not a novel. It is not a collection of short stories. It is, either side of Germany’s 20th Century horror story – one side, instead, both of these things: stories that may stand alone whilst a Jewish family from Vienna, the other linked to a ranking Nazi being inextricably tied together. It is Helen Mort’s first foray into official at Dachau concentration camp – who suffer the the world of fiction beyond poetry. consequences of what men do. Exire: Dystopian Britain, the year unspecified. A new website, Fast forward to 1990s California, and two survivors from the Exire, offers those who feel disconnected from their lives one families meet. Rosa is a young Australian musicologist; Otto is a last act of choice, packaged as a bespoke service. In this world-famous composer and cellist. Music and history link them. unsettling collection, voices fade in and out, people A novel of music, the Holocaust, love, and a dog. connected by Exire’s troubling appeal. At the heart of it all is Lorna, a young musician who has made a painful decision. We hear her story in reverse. Doom 94 Drunken Baker Jānis Joņevs Barney Farmer

£14 £14 Pages: 256 Pages: 160 Cover: Hardback Cover: Hardback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-903110-53-9 ISBN: 978-1-9031105-4-6 Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 2.3cm Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 1.5cm Released: 06.08.2018 Released: 26.04.18

Doom 94 is Joņevs’ debut novel, published first as Jelgava 94 in Characters born into the celebrated Viz comic strip, ‘Drunken Latvia in 2013. Translated into 11 languages already, it is here Bakers’, are here for the first time immortalised in a book. A day for the first time in English. in the life: the decline of the independent bakery, and the steeper decline of the independent bakers within it (cake and The story is set in the 1990s in the Latvian city of Jelgava and bargain booze included). A harsh reality displayed without looks at the burgeoning craze during this decade for the apology, elbowing its way into our comfort zone bringing alternative culture of heavy metal music. laughter and the smell of stale beer.

Doom 94 is a portrait of a generation searching for their identity All publishers wait for the next great book. We’ve been waiting and up against the world, trying not to become ‘one of them’. 21 years and it’s finally arrived But is it for real? Can any adult keep the promise made as a child? The Universe & Me How Was Your Day? Toria Garbutt Will Self

£10 £5 Pages: 82 Pages: 12 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-9031106-0-7 ISBN: 978-1-903110-52-2 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.6 cm Dimensions: A5 Released: 01.03.2018 Released: 01.10.2017

“Rendered unemployed by Arkwright’s spinning Jenny at twelve How Was Your Day? by Will Self, is a special commissioned years old. No wonder she’s a luddite. Happily, she turned to the piece of work from The Humber Mouth Literature Festival 2017. pen, with astonishing results. Ladies and gentlemen I give you, our mellifluous girl from the mills, Toria Garbutt” - John Cooper Published by Wrecking Ball Press in October 2017 as a quality Clarke. 12 page booklet.

“Toria Garbutt is an utterly extraordinary poet, with a rich soul, hard kick and the biggest heart. In live performance she has an exquisite effect on the listener, she made me blush once and I am still blushing thinking about it now” - Salena Godden. The City Speaks Black Teeth and a Shane Rhodes Brilliant Smile Adelle Stripe £25 Pages: 32 £12 Cover: Soft Pages: 182 Language: English Cover: Paperback Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Language: English ISBN: 978-1-9031106-7-6 Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Dimensions: 330x232mm ISBN: 978-1-903110-56-0 Released: 2017 Released: 01.07.2017

Limited edition (3,000) The City Speaks, the poem that opened Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is a novel inspired by the life Hull’s UK City of Culture celebrations. and work of the Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar.

“The words will now last another lifetime, but their sentiment will Best known for her classic black comedy Rita, Sue and Bob chime in the hearts and minds of our citizens for generations to Too, Dunbar wrote three plays before dying at a tragically young come.” - Russ Litten age. This new literary portrayal features a cast of real and imagined characters set against the backdrop of the infamous Buttershaw estate during the Thatcher era.

Adelle Stripe’s writing has been described as ‘a genuine breath of fresh air’. Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is her keenly antic- ipated debut novel. Sometimes I’m So Happy The Bastard Wonderland I’m Not Safe On The Streets Lee Harrison Dean Wilson £12 £10 Pages: 428 Pages: 68 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-9031104-5-4 ISBN: 978-1-9031103-3-1 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 3cm Dimensions: 26 x 14 x 0.5cm Released: 22.08.2016 Released: 17.10.16

Dean Wilson suffers from Poetry Tourettes, a condition that In a land not too far away and a time yet to be decided, one affects one in every ten people in Kingston Upon Hull. But man and his Dad embark on an epic journey of war, peace, being Hull’s Fourth Best Poet is not without complications. love, religion, magnificent flying machines and mushy peas. Sometimes Dean gets overcome with the emotion of it all, and has to escape to the seaside. Sometimes Dean gets sad, but he The Bastard Wonderland is the astonishing debut fantasy novel doesn’t mind too much, because at least he’ll get a poem out of from writer Lee Harrison. it. Most of the time, though, Dean is a happy soul. And sometimes he’s so happy he’s not safe on the streets. This is “The Bastard Wonderland is a novel of startling originality. his first full length collection of poetry – and it is utterly Heartfelt and brutal, sympathetic and strange, Lee Harrison’s magnificent. debut novel stands head and shoulders above the rest in the crowd.” – Robert Dinsdale The Heart Goes Boom How To Be A Bomb Alex Green Andy Fletcher

£10 £8.95 Pages: 234 Pages : 102 Cover: Paperback Cover : Paperback Language: English Language : English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher : Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-9031103-8-6 ISBN : 978-1-9031103-0-0 Dimensions : 210 x 145 x 1.5cm Dimensions : 14.7 x 21 x 1cm Released : 25.07.16 Released : 03.02.16

After his girlfriend pushes him through a fortune-teller’s window, Andy Fletcher’s poetry ranges from simple, stark, haiku-like fading TV star Kieran Falcon realizes his life needs to take a lines to rambling dreamlike prose, by turn both delightfully decisive turn. Aided by an assorted cast of eccentrics, surreal and as clear as a raindrop caught by sunlight. You will mavericks and outright maniacs, Kieran sets off an epic quest return to these words again and again and be rewarded with for true love and immortality. something fresh and arresting at each visit.

Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone ants to be remembered. The Heart Goes Boom is the unforgettable debut novel from Alex Green. You’re So Vain You Toad Tales - Stories & Poems Probably Think This Inspired by Larkin’s Toads Book Is About You Peter Knaggs £8.95 Pages: 82 £8.95 Cover: Paperback Pages: 82 Language: English Cover: Paperback Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Language: English ISBN: 978-1-9031104-2-3 Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Dimensions: A5 ISBN: 978-1-903-11033-1 Released: 2015 Dimensions: A5 Released: 2012

Barring Geoff Hattersley, you’d think most contemporary poets One day, as if by magic, there were toads everywhere. Then, have never done a proper days work in their life. For me this just as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared. After what poetic vacuum, this space walked around or avoided, leaves seemed like the longest hibernation they are back, living within me unable sometimes to link myself to poetry and poets. We all these pages. work don’t we? So in, You’re So Vain You Probably Think This Book Is About You (YSVYPTTBIAY), I wanted to address this Toad Tales is an enthralling account of the Larkin Toads’ balance, to tackle work, the toad as Larkin called it, to show the adventures while they were away. vicissitudes of the work place, how employment shapes us and what it does to us. In doing this I use a sometime working class Illustrations by Alice Beasley. hero Crusoe whose mix of fecklessness and bad luck acts as a conduit for my own socio-political brand of Hulldonian existentialism. Either that or I just chew the fat about the workaday. - Peter Knaggs. Pilgrim Tongues Collision Forces Cliff Forshaw Kath McKay

£8.95 £8.95 Pages: 124 Pages: 74 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-9031103-1-7 ISBN: 978-1-9031102-8-7 Dimensions: 14.7 x 21 Dimensions: 14.7 x 21 Released: 21.11.2015 Released: 21.11.2015

Dense, rich and satisfyingly complex, this collection draws on a This beautifully intricate collection betrays a gimlet eye for detail fertile heritage of myth and legend, evoking lands long and a huge passion for the tiny dramas of everyday life. Kath forgotten and landscapes rendered new by this most modern McKay’s dense and fragmentary lines wind themselves around and lyrical of voices. the subconscious, recounting the quiet firestorms that fuel human relationships and the seismic reverberations that can often ensue. Red Roar Kingdom Niall Griffiths Russ Litten

£12 £10 Pages: 382 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-19031103-2-4 ISBN: 978-1-9031102-0-1 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 1.2cm Dimensions: 19.5 x 14 x 2.5cm Released: 2015 Released: 2015

A giant of modern literature, Niall Griffiths’ first poetry collection is A stranger appears out of nowhere in a prison library and assaults every bit as exhilarating as his celebrated novels. Culled from two a guard. Locked in solitary confinement, he relates his story to decades of notebooks, diaries and the sodden backs of a listener over the course of one night. Kingdom, the third novel beermats, Red Roar – 20 Years of Words celebrates Griffith’s from Russ Litten, spins together magical realism and hard-boiled journey towards ecstatic redemption through language. Here is psychodrama into a heartbreaking urban fable of human poetry that strips the human experience back to its barest bones awakening. Ghosts may not exist – but sometimes they are real. and exposes the raw and unflinching essence within. Do you believe in life before death? Cornrows and Cornfields Vagabond Celeste Doaks A.P. Wolf

£8.95 £10 Pages: 76 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 978-1-903-11044-7 ISBN: 9871903110218 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 1.2cm Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.6cm Released: 2012 Released: 2015

Cornrows and Cornfields is a heartfelt journey from the childhood ‘“I am sitting on the twenty-fourth storey of a hotel in Singapore. I fields of Indiana to the glittering metropolis of Chicago. Spinning am having a very serious nervous breakdown…’” together memory, popular culture and personal politics, celeste doaks makes words dance, weep, wail and sing – often in the If you want to know why the hero of A.P. Wolf’s riotous novel is space of just a couple of lines. This sublime collection of going quietly insane in a concrete tower block, you’ll have to read delightfully bold and vivid poems burn upon the mind’s eye long Vagabond. It’s a story of twenty four hour piss-ups, cock fights, after the final page is turned. mah-jong, and unsafe sex in the kampongs and back-alleys of old Singapore. It features a pair of dogs called Rape and Pillage, a cat called Shitbag, a very large and very dangerous monkey, a crazed older brother called Dave, a posse of under-age and over curious daughters of local army officers, various murderous Marines, and Richard Chan, the most awe inspiring man in all Singapore. And one hell of a lot of Tiger beer. And it all ends… well, badly. The Case of the Missing Art, Survival and So Forth Blue Volkswagen Jules Smith Gerald Locklin £11.95 £6.95 Pages: 244 Pages: 110 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-03-3 ISBN: 1-903110-01-7 Dimensions: 21 x 15.5 x 1.5cm Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 1cm Released: 2000 Released: 1999

Jokes fly fast as bullets in the case of the missing blue This is the book that thoughtful readers of Charles Bukowski volkswagon, a hilarious spoofing of hard-boiled detective fiction have been waiting for. Based on extensive research, it places which is already a small press classic. Bukowski’s poetry in it’s American cultural context, and explores the key poems and collections in his development. It traces “I like Gerald Locklin. I like his stuff. He swings from the heels, magazines, literary contacts and influences from the mid-1940’s pukes from the bathroom… he’s open and he calls the shots.” - to The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992). Charles Bukowski Want to know about Bukowski and the movies, the Beats, “Locklin is the only author I know who writes about everything. Hemingway, Céline and Walt Whitman? About how and why Bu- He is one of my favorite writers but I’ll be damned if I know kowski formed his unique style and image? And about where he where he fits into the scheme of American literature.” – Edward fits in to West Coast and post-War American verse? Scholarly Field but accessible, this is the essential book to have. Also contains drawings by David Hernandez, rare photographs of C.B., and a preface by Gerald Locklin. Stranger in the House Roddy Lumsden is Dead Brendan Cleary Roddy Lumsden

£5.95 £7.95 Pages: 60 Pages: 110 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-06-8 ISBN: 1-903110-08-4 Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 0.5cm Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.9cm Released: 2001 Released: 2001

Brendan Cleary’s poems have never been for the squeamish With his exuberant and otherworldly poems, Roddy Lumsden or faint hearted. They smack of the streets around us. His often has quickly established himself among Britain’s leading manic personas confront their demons, lay bare their hearts and younger poets. In this his third book, the filmic tour de force of reveal the anguish of their personal disorder in the city’s terrain. the title sequence, by turns comic, tragic and fantastic, follows “Stranger in the House” sees Cleary in the realm of the urban the twists in a maze of madness, love and self-deception, from epiphany. Tragic, sad, but darkly comic, his poems speak for the Edinburgh to Stoke Newington via the Philippines. The dispossessed, the bedsit dwellers, the losers in love. collection’s second half brings together new work with some favourite pieces which show why Lumsden is such a popular reader on both the literary and performance circuits. A Gin Pissing, Raw Meat, One Two II Dual Carburettor V-8 Son-of-a- Eva Salzman Bitch from Los Angeles Dan Fante £7.99 Pages: 52 £7.95 Cover: Paperback Pages: 60 Language: English Cover: Paperback Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Language: English ISBN: 0-903110-09-2 Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.5cm ISBN: 1-903110-07-6 Released: 2002 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.8cm Released: 2001

“Italian writer and director Pier Paolo Pasolini once wrote that if a Daring, funny, fierce and musical, Eva Salzman has combined a poet doesn’t manage to scare his readers anymore, then it would robust yet never unsubtle take on modern life and love. be better for him to run away from this world. What kind of use Addressing itself primarily to the muse and the blues, this ‘song- can in fact be a tamed poet to the human race? book’ is woven through with references to history and myth so that the personal is always balanced by an awareness of community “Apparently, Dan Fante knows this well: his first collection of to which she sings. poems by the unpronounceable title, A Gin Pissing, Raw Meat, Dual Carburattor V-8 Son-of-a-Bitch from Los Angeles, shows that With two published collections to her credit and this remarkable he literally aims with his works not only to scare, but also to scar recent compilation, Eva Salzman is one of the most his readers, biting their minds, hearts and souls with his words: accomplished poets working in Britain today. She is a New Yorker, indeed, Dan Fante’s poems are a poetic ebb and flow revolving but such is the universal catchment area of poetry now that her on the readers conscience…” – Erasing Clouds. living and writing in Britain does not make her either an American or a British Poet, but simply a very good one. Contact Print Harmonica Tim Cumming Geoff Hattersley

£7.99 £7.99 Pages: 60 Pages: 82 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-10-6 ISBN: 1-903110-11-4 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.5cm Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 0.7cm Released: 2002 Released: 2003

CCTV cameras, TV recording equipment, microphones, all In Geoff Hattersley’s latest collection, Harmonica, we have W.H. capturing and recording events in peoples lives. In today’s Big Auden’s hero; in fact, a succession of them. These are heroes Brother world, these constant intrusions are at once a threat and battling against the complexity, confusion, drudgery and a comfort – moments would be lost forever without surveillance. relentlessness of making ends meet.

Tim Cumming tells of events caught on camera as they happen to This collection is appealing on many levels: for its simple disparate protagonists, seemingly at random, but which dissolve language, the way he maps the struggle against these into one another as they loose partners, jobs, identities and belief. ‘impersonal pressures’, the optimism you unearth as you read Contact Print is set in a traffic jam on the Holloway Road in more deeply, and the love of people. London. Its hero is Tony Harris, who is seen driving away for the last time from his married girlfriend’s house into a traffic snarl-up, a demo, a pub, a maze of memories, the city or the city itself, repeating itself to the horizon, which finally swallows him up. Along the way we are treated to arresting images of urban life, from the kidnapping of a junior minister to doing smack in the toilets of Paddington station. This is a world of personal and political instability, captured with photographic accuracy. Caminante The Book of Fuck Milner Place Ben Myers

£7.99 £10.95 Pages: 109 Pages: 281 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-12-2 ISBN: 1-903110-15-7 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.9cm Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 2.3cm Released: 2003 Released: 2004

Milner Place was born in Thirsk, North Yorkshire in 1930. He has Written in real time over seven days THE BOOK OF FUCK is a led a varied and vagabond career, including 11 years as captain short, sharp pun-addled pulp fiction pastiche where the absurd of sailing vessels and yachts, and living and working in many underworld of music – and reality itself – is exaggerated to new lands. dimensions.

His first poems were written in Spanish, and a small volume En Following the frantic movements of a rock fan on the trail of Busca de mi Almawas published in Spain in 1977. On settling in America’s public enemy number one, THE BOOK OF FUCK is a Huddersfield in 1987 he started to write poems in English. His buckled break-neck rant let loose at punk rock speed. Literature tenth collection Naked Invitation is being published by Lapwing comes none more black. Publications (Belfast). Previous collections include In a Rare Time of Rain (Chatto & Windus), The Confusion of Anglers and Where Smoke Is (Wide Skirt Press), Piltdown Man & Bat Woman and The City of Flowers (Spout Publications), Caminante (Wreck- ing Ball Press), Certain Matters (Lapwing), and Odersfelt (Flux Gallery Press). His poems have also been widely represented in magazines and he has had reading tours in Germany, Spain, and Northern Ireland. Nappy Rash Travels With Chinaski Mark Kotting Daithidh MacEochaidh

£10.95 £9.95 Pages: 214 Pages: 150 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-16-5 ISBN: 1-903110-23-8 Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 1.6cm Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 1.1cm Released: 2005 Released: 2005

“Think Harry Potter with no magical powers, or friends, living in Travels with Chinaski is the lonely lurch into lunacy, anarchy, south london, doing a job he hates, stressed, paranoid and lonely. the drunken fall into disassociation, the paralytic collapse into I loved Mark Kottings bleak, funny and poetic tale of a london cab alienation – the utter, utter headlong, bar-storming leap into the driver… liberation of madness. Chinaski: the freedom, the fuck death, to fuck your only friend’s girl, to fuck over rat-infested bed-sit-land, to “Like Travis Bickle sedated by the Tindersticks, a man simmering fuck your kidneys, your liver, your numerous court appearances on the edge… and then to fucking care about your beautiful beat-up neighbour as she cries in the night. Chinaski walks into your life, “A funny and moving tale of a man working too hard, for too long, side-stepping last night’s cold sick on the floor, he kicks you out of for too little.” – Sean Lock bed, he’s back from the dead and he is going to make you dance, rage and drink with sheer life. Chinaski is there for you like a hangover that’s moved in to stay. Corksucker The Bat Detector Dan Fante Elizabeth Barrett

£7.99 £7.95 Pages: 128 Pages: 138 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 0-903110-26-2 ISBN: 0-903110-27-0 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 1cm Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 1.1cm Released: 2005 Released: 2005

The often mooted comparisons between Dan Fante and “This poet reassures us of her ability – her quality – as a writer, Charles Bukowski are often applied lazily by reviewers who the minute we begin to read. The language is natural and easy. cannot see past their most superficial connection – namely We are listening to a friend confiding in us, enthralling us, over booze. But where Bukowski’s novels were bawdy and full of a cup of coffee. All our concerns, all our common, but individual macho bravado intercut with rare moments of the old mans experiences of contemporary living are mirrored here in these vulnerability, Fante’s books have been a much darker well wrought verse-tales. After reading these poems you will feel proposition altogether. They map out a more dangerous that you are Elizabeth Barrett’s most intimate friend. Not only territory, the internal seven circles of despair: there is no is it the sureness of this poetry that convinces me that it is the romanticism of the bottle in Chump Change, Mooch or Spitting work of a significant voice, but also its range… Off Tall Buildings, just a pure, unrestrained account of alcohol Humanity, intelligence and a perceptive honesty about herself as a vengeful, angry mistress and bulletins from the front line by and the world are her characteristics. And while the poems have a man at war with his own mind. However, there is now one way a universality they are not a-sexual – they could only have been in which Fante and Bukowski inhabit the same literary world – written by a woman, and go deep into the subjective and objec- both men have proven themselves to be master craftsmen of tive preoccupations of that sexual definition, but not predictably. the novel, poem, and with the release of Corksucker, the Female readers of this book will understand; male readers will short story. be informed and quite probably seduced.” – Kevin Bailey, HQ Magazine. The Scene of My Former The Hail Mary Pass Triumph Fiona Curran Matthew Caley £7.95 £7.95 Pages: 52 Pages: 100 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 0-903110-41-6 ISBN: 0-903110-29-7 Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.5cm Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.9cm Released: 2005 Released: 2005

Matthew Caley’s debut Thirst (1999) was nominated for The The Hail Mary pass is an American football term. It is used Forward Prize For Best First Collection and much acclaimed. when a ball is thrown blind in the vague hope a receiver will make the catch and deliver a last minute victory. “Shaped and honed to a mosaic brilliance.” – Ken Smith. ‘Fiona Curran is a bright and fiesty northern voice. She treads “Stunning invention and remarkable versatility.’” – Sophie the landscape of the urban and the domestic, from the smokey Hannah. fug of the betting shop to the lavendar scent of the bathroom. I like Fiona’s poems because she writes about real people who “Thirst is a joy - comic, witty, even touchingly poignant.” – Time truly exist and whose lives and wine-fuelled loves I can believe Out. in. I just love this.” - The Hail

This second collection extends his patrol across the liminal borders between urban myth and the myth of pastoral escape. An Indian Rug Surprised Digging The Vein By Snow Tony O’Neill Adam Strickson £9.95 £6.95 Pages: 196 Pages: 103 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-18-1 ISBN: ISBN 0-903110-25-4 Dimensions: 21 x 14. 8 x 1.6cm Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 0.7cm Released: 2006 Released: 2005

This book is about people today. Focussing on the poet’s On a relentless Los Angeles summer day, you walk barefoot over surprising and life-changing encounters in the North-West, broken glass and melting tarmac to meet your connection, praying Yorkshire and Bangladesh, this collection is a careful listening and that he will extend your line of credit to one more bag of heroin. a gentle plea for a more shared humanity. Adam Strickson writes You are alone, penniless, and wracked by violent withdrawals. about Kurdish refugees, Pakistani women, Van Gogh, Sidney Last night you robbed a psychotic crack dealer named Shake- Bechet and the inventor of hydraulics with equal love and speare, and had to abandon your apartment for fear of reprisals… attention. An Indian Rug Surprised By Snow is a serious, wise, funny and joyful book, a powerful poetic statement about how this Welcome to Hollywood, and welcome to Digging the Vein. writer has embraced the time and society he lives in. Tony O’Neill’s brutal debut is based upon his own experiences as an addict and sideman to acts as diverse as the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Kenickie and Marc Almond. Through the eyes of his anonymous narrator you will experience a side of Hollywood that few tourists will ever see: Digging the Vein is an unsentimental journey through the underbelly of L.A.’s drug subculture. Doing Time Sharp Street Peter Carr Robert J Bell

£7.95 £10 Pages: 62 Pages: 112 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-46-7 ISBN: 978-1-903110-49-2 Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 x 0.5cm Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 0.9cm Released: 2008 Released: 2012

At the multi-laned intersection to the M20 I listened to Alanis Sharp Street tells the story of 140 men who died in World War I. singing her heart out about the pain of isolation and loss and I They were all from an area of Hull that is a relic of the burst into tears in an Oxford Green Jaguar X Series 3 litre car. Industrial Revolution; growing up together, working together and supporting local Rugby teams. The poems offer a narrative of the “Like missiles, these poems shoot out into the world seeking light War from the opening salvos through to the Armistice. and warmth from out of the darkness of illness. Peter Carr’s poetic voice mirrors the fast-paced juxtopositions of a life The central characters include Mina, a Mother of three girls and previously spent in an internationalist world of commerce. four boys who died in the conflict. One poem, Mina’s Dream uses Wide-ranging and uncompromising, ironic, darkly comedic and the image of running into the sea as a metaphor for the machine sometimes bitter, and populated by the unconventional, the guns that met the men in no-man’s land. displaced and the lonely, the collection is nevertheless bound Another poem, Rugs, brings us back to the contemporary together by the realisation and need of the importance of human conflict in Afghanistan. An end is beginning starts with the notion encounter, companionship and love in an illusory and that you die twice: once when you stop breathing and second earth-shifting world.” – Maggie Harris. when people stop talking about you. The poems seek to keep the talk going. The Reater, Issue 1 The Reater, Issue 2 Various Various

£8 £8 Pages: 228 Pages: 242 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-13-0 ISBN: 1-903110-14-9 Dimensions: 22 x 15.5 x 2.1cm Dimensions: 21.6 x 15 x 2cm Released: 1997 Released: 1998

The Reater brought together challenging new British writing with The shadow of the moth flicks the page I’m reading. I look up the best of Southern California. It features established names to the white blindness of a tired yellow bulb hanging heavy with alongside excellent newcomers. Interleaved among the poetry temporary heat. My eyes recoil, staining the page with silverfish and prose are interviews, reviews, and striking illustrations. The jizz. After blinking a couple of times, I push the button, raise the Reater is also the best U.K. outlet for new and reprinted material nib and I’m back to this… by the great names of L.A./Long Beach literature: Charles Bu- kowski, Gerald Locklin, Fred Voss, Joan Jobe Smith and others. Contributors: Devereaux Baker, Andrew Parker, P.D. Oliver, Maurice Rutherford, Rosemary Palmeira, Joan Jobe Smith, T. Contributors: Dean Wilson, Thomas Kretz, Andrew W. Pye, Carol Anders Carson, Matthew Firth, Jaqueline Karp-Gendre, Ian Parks, Coiffait, Labi Siffre, Lisa Glatt, Seamus Curran, Peter Werner, Brian Docherty, Fred Voss, Peter Knaggs, Dean Wilson, Jules Fred Voss, Ian Parks, Jacqueline Karp Gendre, Charles Smith, Linda K, Seamus Curran, Peter Didsbury, Joanne Bukowski, Gerald Locklin, Dorothy Cowlin, Shane Rhodes, Pearson, Charles Bukowski, Norman Jackson, Andy Fletcher, Devereaux Baker, Graham Hamilton, Joan Jobe Smith, R. Gerry Geoff Stevens, Gerald Locklin, Labi Siffre, Carol Coiffait. Fabian. Photographs by James Brown & Simon Rees. Illustrations by Kevin Rudeforth. The Reater, Issue 3 The Reater, Issue 4 Various Various

£7.95 £9.95 Pages: 262 Pages: 312 Cover: Paperback Cover: Paperback Language: English Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-00-9 ISBN: 1-903110-02-5 Dimensions: 22 x 15.6 x 2.1cm Dimensions: 22 x 15.6 x 2.5cm Released: 1999 Released: 2000

Issue 3 contains poetry by Brendan Cleary, Geoff Hattersley, The most exciting collection of international new writing in the Roddy Lumsden, Labbi Siffre, Joan Jobe Smith, Fred Voss, U.K. continues, with a special Millennium issue. A free 40 track Gerald Locklin, Greta Stoddart, Simon Armitage. Reviews of ‘On CD, featuring live readings by various poets is included. The reat- The Buses With Dostoyevsky’ by Geoff Hattersley, ‘Sacrilege’ by er brings together known and unknown talents in a high-quality Brendan Cleary, ‘New Blood’ a Bloodaxe anthology, and format, with striking illustrations. From the East Coast of Britain to ‘Carnegie Hall With Tin Walls’ by Fred Voss. the West Coast of the States, from Simon Armitage to Fred Voss, featuring poetry, prose, artwork and interviews, and reviews, this Contributors: Brendan Cleary, Gerald Locklin, Khan Singh Kumar, challenging book-sized magazine takes the game into the next Peter Knaggs, K.M. Dersley, Roddy Lumsden, Joan Jobe Smith, century. Labi Siffre, Lisa Glatt, Carol Coiffait, Tricia Cherin, Charles Bukowski, Sean Burn, Devreaux Baker, Jules Smith, Rodney Contributors: Gerald Locklin, Martin Mooney, Julian Turner, Steve Wood, Fred Voss, Richard Whelan, Greta Stoddart, Maurice Dearden, K.M. Dersley, Peter Lewin, Linda Rocheleau, Lawrence Bradby, Rutherford, James Prue, Ben Myers, Simon Armitage, David Geoff Hattersley, Anna Robinson, Ken Steedman, Daithidh MacEochaidh, Stephen Wade, Carol Coiffait, Ben Myers, Joan Jobe Smith, Roddy Lums- Hernandez, Charles Bennet, B.A.J. Evans, A.A. Dodd, Dave den, Fred Voss, Peter Didsbury, S. Waling, J. Morris, Edward Michael Wright, Gordon Mason, Ian Parks, Andrew Parker, Michael O’Durr Supranowicz, Alan Catlin, Jonathan Brookes, S. Harvey, Jon Sum- Curran, Dean Wilson, Daithidh MacEochaidh, Jon Summers, mers, Keith Valentine, Geoff Stevens, T.F. Griffin, Brad Evans, Graham Janet Oliver, Fiona Curran, Denise Duhamel, David Lyall, Hamilton, Jonathan Asser, Edward Field, Brendan Cleary, Joseph Allen, Raymond Robinson, Mark Mckain, Geoff Hattersley. Drawings by Fiona Curran, Don Winter, Michael Gregg Michaud, Peter Knaggs, Dean David Hernandez. Wilson, Giovanni Malito, Susan Maurer. Paintings by Jayne Jones. The Reater, Issue 5 Various

£7.95 Pages: 119 Cover: Paperback Language: English Publisher: Wrecking Ball Press ISBN: 1-903110-04-1 Dimensions: 22 x 15.4 x 1.1cm Released: 2006

“The Reater seems to carry on a colloquial poetic conversation between the east coast of Britain and the west coast of America with readers and writers listening in from many points in the middle. Much of the work it publishes has the rare quality of language overheard, avoiding the preached at spoken to told off stuff that sometimes characterizes grander or more traditional work.” – Simon Armitage

Contributors: Rodney Wood, Peter Ardern, Brian Docherty, Sean Burn, Virgil Saurez, Felicity Tumpkin, Steve Timms, Steve Sneyd, Jacqueline Karp, James Prue, Andrew Parker, Mary Rudbeck Stanko, Ken Smith, Peter Carpenter, David Roberts, David Lyall, Jacqueline Sousa, Jo Pearson, Brendan Mcmahon, Dave Newman, Anna Woodford, Finella Davenport, B.Z. Niditch, Robert Nazarene, Rosemary Palmeira. Paintings by Dee Rimbaud. CONTACT WRECKING BALL PRESS www.wreckingballpress.com twitter: @wbphull

Editor: Shane Rhodes Email: [email protected] Tel: (+44) 01482 211499

Wrecking Ball Press 5 Theatre Mews Egginton St Hull HU2 8DL

SALES FOR UK AND IRELAND Inpress Ltd. Milburn House Dean Street Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1LF Tel: 0191 230 8104 Email: [email protected] www.wreckingballpress.com