New Valley Press books for spring 2024

The soon-to-be-famous five – with an exclusive discount

May 03, 2024

Followers of this blog may be surprised to hear that, as well as endlessly talking about publishing, I’ve actually been doing some publishing this year as well. In that spirit, I’d like to briefly introduce the first five Valley Press books of 2024, all in stock now at the web shop, and available at 20% off their listed price with the discount code MAY24. (That’s a blog-exclusive code; yet another good reason to stay subscribed!)

I’ve been extraordinarily busy this week – hence the ‘radio silence’ since launching the new poetry competition – but can now look forward to a long weekend of rest and recuperation, admiring my handiwork. I’ve got some potentially life-changing reads lined up for you, so let’s get started and meet some books.

Breaking Barriers, edited by Glenn Fosbraey and Katie Pether

This anthology features “100 personal accounts of mental ill health, recovery, and connection”, and is an incredibly moving and affecting read. What sets it apart from our usual fare is that, although filled with creative writing, the majority of the contributors aren’t actually writers, at least not in the way that 80% of my blog readers identified themselves back in February. I’m not sure you’ll completely understand what I mean by this, but after so many years exclusively reading writing by writers, working on this book was a terrifically refreshing (and humbling) experience.

You may have heard the old adage, “if all the worries in the world were put into one pile, each person would be relieved to take back their own, rather than an equal share of the whole.” Reading this anthology is probably the closest you can get to actually living out that scenario, and as a result, it’s as life-affirming an experience as anything Valley Press has ever offered. It’s not all hard times, though, as I hope the subtitle makes clear; as with life itself, light sneaks in here through any crack it can find.

Earwig Country, by Angela Topping

This collection is no less affecting than Breaking Barriers, but reaches the same end from the opposite direction: Angela is a veteran poet with eight previous collections to her name (the first being the same age as me), and brings every ounce of her intellect, passion and experience – both in literature and life – to this banquet of words. In fact, she brings her full talents to bear on every single line, aided by ‘Editor at Large’ Teika Bellamy, who commissioned this volume in late 2022. (Teika is still in our orbit, incidentally, and warming up her next project as we speak.)

At 120 pages, there’s a lot of poetry here, and it’s one to savour rather than flick through; every other poem has the power to change the way you think about its chosen topic, and every half dozen pages is a piece that will leave you absolutely floored. The rest are just plain brilliant, but that’s to be expected; you don’t get nine collections published across four decades without being a bona fide genius.

For the casual browser, I should stress that it’s not all about earwigs. The title poem describes how “hedges held aloft whole tea services of bone china” (the bindweed plant, as featured on the cover), but the narrator discovers “beautiful things have inner horrors I learned to be wary of” (the earwigs). Angela requested that second line be used in the book’s publicity, while I suggested the conclusion of a poem about an heirloom biscuit tin, “Where do they go, those things of little consequence we don’t recall discarding?” I think together, they give you a sense of the collection’s overall preoccupations.

Photovoltaic, by Sarah Watkinson

Those who keep a close eye on the Yorkshire poetry “scene” may have already bought and read this book with a different cover; it was first published by Graft in 2021, and longlisted for the Laurel Prize the following year. Don’t worry though, Bradford-based Graft are here to stay, and in fact you can still buy Photovoltaic from them … but in what must be a rare, if not unprecedented, move, they have generously allowed me to have a go at publishing it as well.

Sarah is a poet and a scientist – Emeritus Research Fellow in Fungal Biology at the University of Oxford, no less – and I’ve played this up for my edition with a catchy subtitle, as well as visualising the process of a leaf capturing light on the cover. That’s roughly the meaning of the title, by the way; if a life form is ‘photovoltaic’, it is able to capture light and convert it into energy, as explained in a brief new introduction by Oxford’s Professor of Ecosystem Science, Yadvinder Malhi.

You’ll note it’s ‘Poet-Scientist’, not ‘Scientist who dabbles in poetry’, and this is intentional; Sarah is hugely accomplished in both disciplines, which allows her to illuminate details of the natural world from a truly unique angle. (That pun was not intentional, and we must assume the same about Steve Ely’s endorsement, in which he describes how the author tackles profound themes with “a light touch”.)

I fear I’ve used up all my superlatives on Angela’s collection (and have two more to go!) – but this book is also filled with genius. I’d happily read (and publish) another eight collections by Sarah, if she had a mind to catch up.

The Passion of the Rabbit God, by Hongwei Bao

Tu’er Shen, or the Rabbit God, is defined succinctly on Wikipedia as “a Chinese deity who manages love and sex between men”, and he’s been around since the 17th century – as queer icons go, that’s pretty established. Here, his story is just one of several “old tales retold” by Hongwei Bao, in a journey from past to present, from Inner Mongolia to Nottingham, on a mission to examine Asian and queer identity – both separately and where they intertwine.

Can I just say: what a phenomenal achievement it is to learn English as a second language, then write a book of poetry that can comfortably sit alongside the likes of Angela and Sarah on the Valley Press bookshelf. Hongwei is no stranger to impressive feats, of course – his CV on the University of Nottingham’s website, where he is a Professor, is longer than this blog – but I think of poetry as being the World Cup final of language, end-to-end nuance and subtlety. (An honorary mention for Ilaria Boffa here, though Italian must be a slightly easier starting point than Mandarin.)

Somewhat unexpectedly, the Valley Press poet Hongwei most reminds me of is Norah Hanson; besides writing in a similar form, there’s a calmness and wisdom to these poems, a way of making big points through attention to small (often mundane) details, and the sort of quietly “political” writing that doesn’t have a politician in sight. An absolute treat, in other words.

The Upcycled Healing Brain, by Luca M Damiani

Talking of phenomenal achievements: how about writing a poetry collection after a neurological trauma that caused a 52% impairment of your central nervous system? Luca Damiani did just that, creating this poetic diary/memoir during a long (and ongoing) journey of rehabilitation – before ultimately planting the eighty individual poems, on biodegradable paper, in a garden of his own design (named ‘The Upcycled Healing Garden’, of course). Luckily, he kept some digital copies too, which has allowed me to share his journey with readers.

The book depicts, to some extent, an unthinkable journey to hell and back – but as the cover suggests (and against all reasonable expectations), it’s also fun. Each page features quirky illustrations as per the cover, and though the subjects discussed are often heart-wrenchingly serious, Luca has such a playful way with language (and layout) that you’ll often find yourself laughing out loud, as he negotiates “this limbo of weird nonsense.” The “spoons” are from spoon theory, which we’ve discussed here before and, coincidentally, is also explained (with illustrations of spoons) in our forthcoming children’s novel The Late Crew.

I know it’s the most overused word when describing books, but this one is really unique. I have probably glanced at more than 10,000 books, published and unpublished, and never seen one quite like this before. I’m fairly confident you haven’t either.

Regular readers will recall “unique” appearing in my list of the six qualities I look for in each VP book: earnest, unique, exceptional, thoughtful, important, catchy. I promised in March to explain those in detail at some point – but while you wait for that, today’s post is a great demonstration of what they look like in action. I am so proud to have played a part in bringing these titles out into the world.

If anything’s caught your eye, why not head over to the VP shop and grab a copy – and don’t forget your code! If you have a favourite brick-and-mortar bookshop you’d like to request them in, that’s cool too: but Breaking Barriers already needs reprinting (I have a few copies left here), Earwig Country and Photovoltaic aren’t officially available until mid-May, and the other two aren’t due for trade release until July, so … actually the VP shop is looking pretty good right now!

Thanks for reading, as ever, and I’ll be back in your inboxes next week with an intriguing new style of author interview.