About Rockingham Press | New and
Recent Titles | New
Poetry (1) | New
Poetry (2) | Turkish & Persian Poetry
| Jewish Poetry
| Biography | Hertfordshire History
| Stocklist 2002-2007
| How to order
| Submissions criteria
| Ware Poetry
| David's page | Highbury County
|
Kayacan
Fergar, written in London after the VI flying bomb (or "doodle
bug") raids on South London. Feyyaz was then a news translator
in the BBC Turkish Section, of which he was later its head. He
sent the stories to a news magazine in Istanbul and in 1963 they
were awarded the Turkish Language Academy Prize. The critic Bedri
Rahman has written “I got hold of some pictures of Henry Moore
(the Shelter Sketchbooks) and weighed them against these stories
(Mrs Valley’s War) and the stories weighed heavier!”. The translation
by Ruth Christie and Selçuk Berilgen has been assisted by a grant
from the TEDA Project of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Available from November 2007.
ludes
a wealth of his later poems – poems of love, travel, thoughts
about war and nostalgia, including studies of a redundant hospital
and a cinema. ‘Literary Landscapes’ are one of Mercer Simpson’s
special interests. Here are poems about Thomas Hardy in Cornwall,
memories of Henry Vaughan in Wales, a literary festival in Torbay
and the pool where Virginia Woolf committed suicide. "Mercer
Simpson’s poetry is an interesting blend of the thoughtful, wistful
and speculative…" — Robert Nash (Bulletin of the Welsh Academy)
Also available is Mercer Simpson's previous collection, Early Departures, Late
Arrivals. As the title infers, these poems have been selected
from a large body of the poet’s earlier
work. More traditional than some of his recent poems, they represent
a young man’s somewhat romanticised view of life and love, confessional
The occasional angelus
Through
the Window of Taj Mahal is the second Rockingham
collection from the Iran-born poet Mahmud Kianush.
These
are poems in their images and symbolism universal,
yet with strong kinship to the ancient Persian tradition
of ‘divan’ poetry, most of them dealing with timeless
subjects, such as love, the loss of innocence and
the longing for home. “My home town is a gem of love
on a ring of memory ... My home town is a ring in
pawn; if I want to redeem it I will have to return
to the cave where nakedness was adornment”. Kianush’s
concern to write about freedom and the pain of the
dispossessed lies behind the apparent contradiction
between the book’s title and the illustration on the
cover. “That is not the Taj Mahal! It is Persepolis!”
The poems were written in the 1970s when, as today,
there was strict censorship in Iran. Most allusions
to politics or freedom were banned but translations
from foreign poets escaped censure. Thus Kianush pretended
that his poems were translations from an Indian poet
by the name of Pradip Uma Shankar (writing about the
Taj Mahal) CLICK HERE FOR POEMS BY MAHMUD
KIANUSH.
Still availble and selling
well is the history of the publisher's old school, HIGHBURY COUNTY REVISITED by Brian Boyle, edited by
David Perman. Highbury now has its own page on this website, with
information about the Old Highburians' Association, the annual
reunions in April of each year in London, and two very nostaligic
staff photographs. 
Our
main work of local Hertfordshire history for 2005 is a ground-breaking
art book. THE ARTIST
AND THE ORGANIST: The Luppinos of Hertford and Ware
tells the story of two generations of the famous Luppino (or Lupino)
family, which later found fame on both stage and screen. Thomas
Frederick Luppino (1749-1845) was a scene painter at Drury Lane
and Covent Garden and spent much time sketching views of Hertford,
Ware and the surrounding area -- probably as material for his
theatrical scenery. His grandson, Thomas William Luppino (1790-1859)
was an accomplished musician and organist of St. Mary's Church,
Ware. This fascinating book -- by theatre historican Derek Forbes
-- tells the story of their lives and relationship as well as
publishing for the first time the hundred or so sketches of Thomas
Frederick Luppino (four of them in full colour).
Rockingham is privileged to have published four books
by Lotte Kramer -- Earthquake and other poems, Selected and
New Poems 1980-1997, The Phantom Lane ... and now Black
over Red. In many ways it is Lotte's best book
-- an opinion not only from her publisher but also many friends
who have seen it prior to and immediately after publication. Yes,
Lotte Kramer is a Holocaust poet -- the memories, the returns
and reunions are here as vivid as ever -- but she is so much more.
In Black over Red (the title comes from a painting by Mark
Rothko) she ranges widely over European culture, the English countryside,
over friends and family. "Her poems appear simple," wrote Anne
Stevenson, "but their lucidity is that of deep, unmuddied waters."
Moniza Alvi has said of Wendy French's first full collection
that it is "packed with risk-taking poems, cut close to the bone."
Wendy is the former headteacher of a hospital school for disturbed
pupils and there are poems about them, about children in Africa
and about the death of a dearly-loved niece. There is also a wonderful
sequence of poems introduced by fragments of the poems of Sappho.
Wendy French is the author of two pamphlets: Sky Over Bedlam
and We Have A Little Sister And She Hath No Breasts (from
tall-lighthouse). She has also edited three Rockingham anthologies
of hospital children's poems -- This is Just to Say and
Dog Bark (for the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School)
and What's Your Problem? (for the Guys Hospital
Evelina School). 
The
Thin Places is the third Rockingham collection from the American-born
poet, anthologist and publisher, Judi Benson. Judi has been Writer-in-Residence
at the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, in Oncology and
Palliative Care. She contributed to You Again – Last Poems
and Other Words, Ken Smith (Bloodaxe, 2004). With Agneta
Falk, she co-edited The Long Pale Corridor: Contemporary
Poems of Bereavement (Bloodaxe, 1996); with Ken Smith,
she co-edited Klaonica: Poems for Bosnia (Bloodaxe,
1993). “Judi Benson’s new collection,” writes Tom Pow, “encompasses
many different geographies – from that of a London bookshop to
Italy and the Balkans. She crosses borders between the present
and the deep past in the powerful ‘Burying the Ancestors’, but
most significantly in a series of memorable elegies for her late
husband, the poet, Ken Smith, she maps out the territories of
the living and the absent." Copyright © David Perman 2000--2008
