REALITY STREET

Sorry I've gone a bit AWOL from this column recently. Since the fanfare of the publication of the second volume of Bill Griffiths' collected poems I've been taking a sabbatical from Reality Street business, to concentrate on writing. Yes, writing. That's where it all started for me, and will finish. I never really meant to be a publisher.

But I thought I'd better do an update on Reality Street's plans for the future, just in case people were beginning to think that was all over.

So the upshot is that we will return to publishing new books in 2015. Two manuscripts are ready to go, and one is in process right now and will be in some sort of shape by the end of June. There may be a fourth, but I don't know.

The latter is the long-awaited "Daughter of Out of Everywhere", currently being edited by Emily Critchley. The original Out of Everywhere, published in 1996 and edited by Maggie O'Sullivan, was Reality Street's first big hit. An anthology of "linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America and the UK", it featured 30 contributors. Amazingly, it is still selling a few copies every month, and is indisputably our best seller.

The idea is to publish a second volume, nearly 20 years later. It will feature writing by women poets who were not in the original volume, and in most cases were not even writing at the time of the original's publication. It will question whether the category of "woman poet" has changed or is even viable as a category now. There will be a larger number of contributors - probably around 40. It will be accompanied by a CD with audio tracks of aural poems. Emily says she is enjoying the editing process. Should be exciting.

It will be called, imaginatively, Out of Everywhere 2. (I've decided against Hollywood-style Roman numerals.)

The other two books are Alphabet of Love Serial, offbeat prose by Lou Rowan, editor of the inestimable Golden Handcuffs Review, and Quite Frankly, versions of all 300+ Petrarch sonnets by Peter Hughes. Both will be a hoot.

More soon.