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About Mulfran Press / News / Events

Mulfran Press is based in Cardiff, Wales. It publishes poetry collections and pamphlets, as well as essay pamphlets on topics in poetics.
Our postal address is: Mulfran Press, 2 Aber Street, Cardiff CF11 7AG. Email: queries@mulfran.co.uk

buying Mulfran Press books and pamphlets

Mulfran books and pamphlets are sold through bookshops and through bookshops' web sites; if not in stock, bookshops can order them for customers via TeleOrdering. Or, you may get them more quickly by post from us at Mulfran Press, 2 Aber Street, Cardiff CF11 7AG. When ordering direct from us, please enclose a cheque drawn in British Pounds Sterling to Mulfran Press for the full cover price; we do not charge postage. Facilities for ordering from us online will be provided in the future.

Mulfran Press books are listed on Amazon as not alvailable because Mulfran cannot afford Amazon's terms and conditions for selling via them. Your local bookshop will ordinarily be happy to order our books for you and some bookshops stock selected Mulfran books and / or pamphlets. Mulfran Press books are also available from Blackwell. For more information, see Blackwell Bookshop Online and search for any of our books. On the full page [via title or "More" link] for any of our books is a link for Mulfran Press that will bring up a list of all our books offered by Blackwell.

If you require further information about this or other matters, send your questions to queries@mulfran.co.uk.

the kinds of poetry that interest us at Mulfran Press

We like — and read — a very wide variety of poetry, much of it contemporary, and most of it from the 20th and 21st centuries; we also appreciate the poetry of earlier periods, and have an interest in the poetry of other languages, usually as represented in translation. We provide examples and recommended reading. Have a look!

the name of the press

Mulfran (pronounced meel-vran, accent on the first syllable) is a Welsh word for cormorant. Mulfran Press was started in the docks area of Cardiff, where numerous cormorants can be observed diving, perching and spreading their wings. To get a feel for how Mulfran sees cormorants, read Amy Clampitt's poem, "The Cormorant in its Element"on Gritfish.com.


NEW: short stories on the Mulfran site

From 22 November 2013 we began to post an occasional short story here each month. This first story, Two Novembers by Frances Hay, is particularly appropriate for this date. A Christmas story is planned for December.


Mulfran Poetry launch Party, 7:30pm on Wednesday 16 November 2011
OXFAM Marylebone Bookshop, 91 Marylebone High St, London W1U 4RB

Helen Lovelock-Burke, Michael Arnold Williams, and Mulfran Press celebrated the publication of Helen’s book Dayship and Michael’s book The Acolytes. There were readings from their books and by special guest poet Richard Price.


Lesley Saunders, poem 'Germ Theory' chosen for Poetry Society Autumn 2011 Members Poems.
The poem and others by her are linked from here on the Poetry Society site.


Submissions closed for now, forthcoming titles to be announced soon
We regret that until further notice, Mulfran cannot consider any manuscripts other than those already received or invited.


Mulfran author shortlisted for New Poetry Award
Maureen Jivani's Insensible Heart has been shortlisted for the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award 2010. This award, judged this year by Daljit Nagra, Tamar Yoseloff and Adam O'Rordan, celebrates poets' first collections. The winner was announced in August: Carrie Etters' The Tethers
. The prize is organised by the London Festival Fringe in conjuction with Cegin Productions and Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour. See the Coffee-House Poetry web site for further information.


Some Languages Are Hard To Dream In launch in Cardiff
The sequence Some Languages Are Hard To Dream In (first published in No Doves) is now released as a pamphlet, number five in the Mulfran Miniatures series, accompanied by specially commissioned images by Christopher Hedley-Dent. Launched with an accompanying dance performance by Liza Wedgwood at the Glanfa Stage, Wales Millennium Centre, 6pm 11 July 2010.


Mulfran author wins TLS poetry competition
Peter Daniels won first prize in the 2010 TLS poetry competition with his poem "The Pump".


Windsor Bookshop stocks Mulfran
All Mulfran Press titles were stocked at Windsor Bookshop, 9A Windsor Road, Penarth CF64 1JB.
This bookshop is now open under new management and with a new name: Griffin Books. I hope that Mulfran books will be stocked there in the future.


Launch of Mulfran Miniatures, Insensible Heart and Ashes of a Valleys Childhood
A Friends Meeting House in East London hosted the first launch of the first four in the Mulfran Miniatures series of illustrated pamphlets, as well as Maureen Jivani's Insensible Heart). The room was full to overflowing, and all the readers received an enthusiastic response.

A further reading on 8th June 2010 at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, launched Ashes of a Valleys Childhood by Lynda Nash (illustrated with period photographs from the '60s and '70s) and the pamplets: Roy Morgans' The Sychbant, illustrated by Marion K V Kenning; Peter Daniels' Work & Food, illustrated by Moira Coupe; Malcolm Lewis' The Hard Man, with two Ceri Richards drawings as illustration; Maureen Jivani's My Shinji Noon (first published by Mulfran in Insensible Heart), illustrated by Jill Schoenmann.
Academi logoAn audience of about 50 enjoyed an exciting mix of talents from South Wales, Trethomas, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Penarth and further afield. This event was supported by Academi (now known as Literature Wales).


Duncan readingThe launch of Duncan McGibbon'sThe Consolations was held Saturday 9 January 2010 at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution (BRLSI) in Bath. Light refreshments & a glass of wine or soft drink were provided courtesy of Mulfran Press, and books were sold at the special launch price of £7.00. Although the weather prevented a number of people from being able to attend, there was a good crowd and it was a most enjoyable occasion.

 

Recent/forthcoming from Mulfran Press

Out September 2019

Track Record front cover

Track Record: Music by Eyebrow, Poems by The Spoke, Photographs by Paul Wigens The Severn Beach Line is a route packed with wonderful variety, history, and inspiration, passing through landscapes that are by turns urban, suburban, industrial, post-industrial, rural, picturesque, bleak, homespun and spectacular. The music and poems in Track Record respond to this journey, marked by the footsteps of the stations along the way. £12. Free CD included.

Out November 2018

A Part of the Main cover

A Part of the Main by Lesley Saunders and Philip Gross. £14. This important long poem is published as an attractive 60-page softback, cover art and book design by Valerie Coffin Price with particular attention to choice of material, typeface, colour and layout. Order by email to leona@mulfran.co.uk or by post to Mulfran Press at the address opposite.

Ten Poems (Mulfran Miniatures 10) by Adnan Al-Sayegh, with illustrations by Kate Hazell with Russian, English and Arabic parallel text on each 2-page opening. Russian translations by Natalya Dubrovina, English translations by Jenny Lewis and Alaa Juma. £6. Order by email to leona@mulfran.co.uk or by post to Mulfran Press at the address opposite.

Out 2017

Love & its Seasons by Aamer Hussein
The Flood: Extract from Gilgames Retold (Mulfran Miniatures 9) by Jenny Lewis, woodcuts by Francis Kiernan

Out 2016

Ten Poems (Mulfran Miniatures 8) by Adnan Al-Sayegh, translated from Arabic, illustrations by Kate Hazell

Out 2015

Splash: Memories of Water by Beverley Kemp
A Crater the Size of Calcutta by Linda Lamus

Out October 2014cover

  The Walls Have Angels by Lesley Saunders
   60 pages, £9.50, ISBN 978-1-907327-23-0
   Available from bookshops, online & direct from us.

Lesley Saunders' new collection The Walls Have Angels is inspired by her period as poet in residence at a Tudor manor house and the story of two famous guests there, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

   More about Lesley Saunders and The Walls Have Angels to come.

Out September 2014

  Singing For Inanna
   by Jenny Lewis and Adnan Al-Sayegh

   30 double-width pages and CD, £10.00
   ISBN 978-1-907327-22-3
   Available from bookshops, online & direct from us.

New poems by Iraqi poet Adnan al-Sayegh and new translations of extracts from his epic poem ‘Uruk’s Anthem’ are paired with poems arising form Jenny Lewis’s long-term engagement with the epic of Gilgamesh. The work here begins to address the balance of feminine and masculine elements across time, often in the context of the horrors of war, but never without a deep appreciation of the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq and Britain. The CD of recorded poems — each in both English and Arabic — with oud music composed and played by Patricia de Mayo, also features incidental music by Naseer Shamma and the song ‘Anthem for Gilgamesh’ by Jenny Lewis.

   More about Singing for Inanna to come.

Out March 2014cover

   My Life With Dylan Thomas by Tony Curtis
   72 pages, £5.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-21-6
   Available from bookshops, online & direct from us.


Tony Curtis was born in Carmarthen in 1946 and so for seven years shared that town with Dylan Thomas, his family and friends, for whom it was the main railway station and watering-hole on their way from Laugharne to the rest of the world. Wales’s first Professor of Poetry describes being taught, as an undergraduate, by Vernon Watkins at Swansea University in 1967 and he goes on to trace Dylan’s influence on his own writing and the experiences of other writers and artists, including Dannie Abse, Jonah Jones, John Pudney, John Ormond, Glyn Jones, Aeronwy Thomas and Ceri Richards. Tony Curtis has published over thirty books, including eight collections of poetry and has won the Western Mail’s Dylan Thomas Prize and the Dylan Thomas Award for Spoken Poetry, judged by Dannie Abse and Dylan’s daughter Aeronwy.

   More about Tony Curtis and My Life with Dylan Thomas to come.

Out May 2013Now as Then front cover

   Now as Then : Mesopotamia~Iraq poems in English and Arabic by Adnan al-Sayegh and Jenny Lewis, introduction by Dr Paul Collins
   28 pages, £4.50, ISBN 978-1-907327-18-6
   Available from bookshops, online & direct from us.


Arising from the 'Writing Mesopotamia' series of readings and workshops at the Ashmolean Museum in April 2013, Now as Then celebrates the history and culture of ancient Mesopotamia and modern Iraq as well as denouncing the devastation of wars ancient, historic and conteporary. Each of the poems appears in both English and Arabic. Photos of four artifacts courtesy Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum. Launch reading at the Asmolean 12.30 Sunday 28 April 2013.

   More about Adnan al-Sayegh, Jenny Lewis and Now as Then to come.

Out April 2012

Front cover of Counting Eggs   Counting Eggs by Peter Daniels
   63 pages, £9.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-15-5
    Available from bookshops, online (for example,
    Blackwell's will order from us for you) & direct from us.


  This book brings a much-published poet his first collection. Peter Daniels has taken a long and circuitous journey towards it. On the way, he has won several competitions including the Arvon, TLS and Ledbury, as well as twice being a winner in the Poetry Business pamphlet competition. Counting Eggs includes a generous helping of prize-winning and new poems, as well as selected poems from earlier pamphlet publications.

  
   More about Peter Daniels and Counting Eggs.


 

Out November 2011front cover of Dayship

   Dayship by Helen Lovelock-Burke
   80 pages, £9.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-14-8
   Available from bookshops, online & direct from us.


Helen Lovelock-Burke grew up on the American Atlantic seaboard and has lived in England for much of her adult life. In Dayship, she pays careful attention to what matters most, as well as noting life's occasional sheer strangeness. Some of these poems come from a perspective that can perhaps only be achieved in late maturity. Time — its moments seemingly held in suspension, or as it passes, or the lost times, or those held in memory's safe deposit — is a recurring theme. And where other than here will you find the cross-generational autobiography of a wedding dress?

   More about Helen Lovelock-Burke and Dayship to come.

Out October 2011front cover of The Acolytes

   The Acolytes by Michael Arnold Williams
   104 pages, £9.50, ISBN 978-1-907327-13-1
    Available from bookshops, online (for example,
    Blackwell's will order from us for you) & direct from us.

   The courageous and truthful poems in The Acolytes explore the overlapping experiences of family life, love life, and in particular the life and love of science and of art. Inevitably, war touches these lives at many points: a child's experience of the Second World War in the first section; in the central section, the ambiguity and early risks of turning atomic weapons research toward the saving of lives; in the final section, with the poems capturing old men's memories of the Great War.

   The Acolytes has an Amazon customer review.

   [More about Michael Arnold Williams and The Acolytes.]

 

 

Out September 2011

Two new Mulfran Miniatures:
Just Like That by Crystal Jeans with illustrations by Emrys Williams
Eight Pegs by Tony Curtis with drawings by Rozanne Hawksley

Out July 2011

front cover picture

   Aria | Anika translations & new poems by Sudeep Sen
   188 pages, £11.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-03-2
  
The Indian edition, Aria, was published by Yeti Books / Monsoon Editions, won the inaugural A K Ramanujan Translation Award, and was named as one of the Best Books of the Year by Outlook magazine, as one of the 'Notable Books of the Year 2009' by Mint / Wall Street Journal and in Frog Books Blogspot. See also a detailed review in Molossus. And another in Himal. This UK edition is substantially expanded to include over fifty new poems in English by Sudeep Sen himself, powerful poetry of love, loss, celebration, grief, art, dance, politics and history.

[More about Sudeep Sen and Aria | Anika].  

cover - Black Mountains   
Black Mountains: Poems and images from the Bog–Mawnog Project

   poems by Christopher Meredith
   images by Elizabeth Adeline, Lin Charlston, Kirsty Claxton,
   Deborah Aguirre Jones, & Pip Woolf
   28 pages, £4.50, ISBN 978-1-907327-16-2 [OUT OF PRINT]
  
These poems and images respond to the beautiful fire-scarred and fragile landscape of the upland peat bogs of the Black Mountains in Powys.

[More about Christopher Meredith and Black Mountains to come].

Out 10 April 2011

front cover After Gilgamesh   After Gilgamesh by Jenny Lewis
   64 pages, £7.00, ISBN 978-1-907327-10-0
  
The earliest story, written thousands of years ago, still has echoes in today's world. In an epic verse drama for youth theatre, Captain Robbie Roberts lies injured in hospital and flits between is life as a soldier in Iraq amd and the mythic world of Mesopotamia. Has anything really changed in 4,000 years?

[More about Jenny Lewis and After Gilgamesh]



Mulfran MiniaturesWork & Food illustration

This series of small-format pamphlets (following on from the Vennel Press Brief Pleasures series) includes taster selections by Mulfran poets, by poets who have not yet published a full collection, and by already well-known poets, alongside artists whose images inspired, are inspired by, or respond to the poems.
Work & Food by Peter Daniels, illustrated by Moira Coupe
My Shinji Noon by Maureen Jivani, illustrated by Jill Schoenmann
The Hard Man by Malcolm Lewis, with two Ceri Richards drawings as illustration
The Sychbant by Roy Morgans, illustrated by Marion Kenning
Some Languages Are Hard To Dream In by Lesley Saunders, with images by Christopher Hedley-Dent
Eight Pegs by Tony Curtis, with drawings by Rozanne Hawksley
Just Like That by Crystal Jeans, with illustrations by Emrys Williams
Ten Poems by Adnan Al-Sayegh with illustrations by Kate Hazell, in English translation by Jenny Lewis and Alaa Juma; original Arabic at end of chapbook
The Flood, extract from Gilgamesh Retold by Jenny Lewis, with woodcuts by Frances Kiernan and Arabic translations by Adnan Al-Sayegh and Ruba Abughaida
Ten Poems by Adnan Al-Sayegh with Russian, English and Arabic parallel text on each 2-page opening (Russian translations by Natalya Dubrovina, English translations by Jenny Lewis and Alaa Juma)

All titles £4 each except The Flood and Ten Poems [Russian with parallel English and Arabic text] £6 each, all post-free direct from Mulfran Press. As with Mulfran books, also available from Blackwell's Bookshop Online. More about Mulfran Miniatures.

Mulfran books 2009-2010

book cover

   The Consolations by Duncan McGibbon
   65 pages, £7.95, ISBN 978-1-907327-00-1
   Available from Blackwell's, other bookshops, & direct from us.

With its epithet that the heart should speak, Duncan McGibbon explores the consolations of the poor, of the story, of the fallen. These explorations take the poet on journeys from Our Lady of Geneva through the desolate Bernese Oberland, through Haworth under an eclipse and through the spiritual landscape of Saint Seraphim’s Niszny Novgorod, before returning to Our Lady of Bruges and the heart of his family. More about Duncan McGibbon and The Consolations.

 

Ashes of a Valleys Childhood cover image   Ashes of a Valleys Childhood by Lynda Nash
   56 pages, £7.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-01-8
   Available from Blackwell's, other bookshops, & direct from us.
   Also sold at Castle Stores, Laugharne.

This first collection of poems by Lynda Nash is selected from a broader body of work to focus on narratives that individually and collectively illuminate what it was like to grow up in the South Wales valleys in the 1960s and '70s. The stories are grounded in the lived experience of the poet and other children growing up in this particular time and place. More about Lynda Nash and Ashes of a Valleys Childhood.

 

Insensible Heart cover image   Insensible Heart by Maureen Jivani
   66 pages, £7.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-02-5
   Available from Blackwell's, other bookshops, & direct from us.

Maureen Jivani’s poems explore the roles of art, faith, sexuality, aging, and politics in history and in contemporary society. She draws on her experiences as a nurse to reflect on the distortions which she has observed: loss of control, faith, body-parts, all feature heavily in her work. There is a celebration and dry wit in her poems too and a delight in the absurd. Ultimately it is the world of the troubled and the estranged where she most makes her poetry felt in concise, stark or surreal images; where nature is most revealed; where the undercurrent of love and fragility most pervade. [More about Maureen Jivani and Insensible Heart]

 

No Doves front cover   No Doves by Lesley Saunders
   60 pages, £8.99, ISBN 978-1-907327-08-7
   Available from Blackwell's, other bookshops, & direct from us.

Metamorphic rather than anthropomorphic, these poems depict the 'creatureliness' of all existence: how distinctions between the non-human and human worlds dissolve as you look at them – rather like 'the act / of walking through walls'. Yet the book as a whole is really a meditation on the notion that 'the only thing to be had on earth / is love, leafless, wintering'. [More about Lesley Saunders and No Doves]