postcard from a poetry fair

Two postcard-type posts in two weeks! This time, I’m writing to you the day after The Poetry Society’s Free Verse fair in London SW1 where we had a Micro Library Books stall, sharing our collaborations of visual-led poetry and handmade artists’ editions, exhibiting along with over seventy other independent publishers.

There’s always so much stuff I want to buy at a book fair that it often sends me into a state of decision-freeze and I end up empty-handed save for the ‘I wish I’d bought that’ regrets. Or I go the other way, as was the case yesterday: raiding the cash tin and coming away with a bumper bookfair haul. Here are all of the delicious titles I bought at Free Verse, ready for my bedtime reading this week:

From top-left to bottom-right:

Inheritance by Jasmine Cooray, published by Bad Betty Press, 2023.

The Plum Review edited by Aaron Kent, published by Broken Sleep Books, 2022.

Roll Again: a book of games to play compiled and edited by Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving, published by Sidekick Books, 2022.

The Everyday English Dictionary by Ivy Alvarez with images by Kim Vouseden, published by Paekakariki Press, 2016.

Earthbound Poetry Series: Volume 1, No. 9 by Peter Gizzi and No. 7 by Iain Sinclair, published by Earthbound Press, 2020.

Plants Beyond Desire by Ayşegül Yildirim, published by Broken Sleep Books, 2022.

The words: an autobiography by Grant Maierhofer and The Vernier Text by Philip Terry, both published by If a Leaf Falls Press, 2022.

The Library by Morley House: text by Dinara Asadulina; drawing, design and typesetting by Christos Kakouros, 2023.

100 Words Are Never Enough by Ceri Amphlett, 2019.

The Emma Press Catalogue – I wanted to buy every title on the Emma Press stall, they are all beautiful, so I took a catalogue to give me some more time to choose.

Fortune-telling scratchcards by Astra Papachristodoulou / The Poetry Kiosk. Fortunes yet to be revealed!