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Smokestack Books has been called, “One of the most courageous little presses in Britain”. Join Smokestack Books director Andy Croft for a special Teesside launch of three recently published collections, with readings by all three authors.

W.N Herbert

“Bubbles and seethes with wit and polysyllabic adventurousness” Bill is a Scottish poet who has lived in the North East for many years. His work is funny, moving, and energetic. He’ll be reading from Unselected Poems, which features, amongst other fantastical characters his outrageous Murder Bear.

Mark Robinson

“Muscular and discursive... the great strength of his work is the straightforward human warmth it demonstrates.” Mark lives in Eaglescliffe and will launch The Infinite Town – you may know the title poem from the Stockton Flyer plinth on Stockton High Street. Mark’s new collection is playful and emotional, like his readings.

Bob Beagrie

“Erudite, engaging, attuned to the pulse of the past and the voice of the people, prepare to be challenged and enthralled”

Bob is one of Teesside’s most active poets and will be reading from Eftwyrd, a new epic poem about Brother Oswin, a seventh century monk. Bob’s reading will showcase his unique language and performance skills.

More about the books being launched

W.N. Herbert, Unselected Poems

For many poets there comes a point when a Selected Poems seems a logical step. Their style is established, their subject-matter their own, and their greatest hits surely function as a succinct introduction to their career. But, for WN Herbert, the idea that he has had a career, let alone that it was ‘about’ anything, seems unlikely. Instead, he has always enjoyed the opportunity to head off in as many directions as possible.

Usually at the same time. These are the best of Herbert’s ‘unselected’ poems, including On Your Nerve: A Wake for Frank O’Hara; the libretto, Little Instruments of Apprehension; the mock-epic, Don Juan’s Pilgrimage; and his award-winning pamphlet, Murder Bear.

Mark Robinson, The Infinite Town

What happens when the news gets into your dreams and unravels the work of the day? When you feel homesick, especially when you are at home? What happens when the future tracks you down and corners you? Who blinks first? The Infinite

Town is a painful – and playful – mapping of public spaces and private places under assault. Exploring history, home, hurt, and hope in four interconnected sequences,

Robinson’s search for the infinite possibilities of the everyday, of empathy and solidarity, leads to his most intricately structured and musical collection yet.

Bob Beagrie, Eftwyrd

An epic poem set in seventh-century Northumbria on the eve of the Synod of Whitby. Brother Oswin (who first appeared in Beagrie’s Leásungspell) travels to Streanæshealh across a wild landscape steeped in magic and folklore. There he is shunned as a boggart, elfking, merman and the cursed puck responsible for spreading the pandemic that rages through the kingdom. Meanwhile the politics of ffaith, fealty, liberty and power play out through the lives of the people he encounters.

Written in a hybrid of Old English and Northern vernaculars, the book conjures a sense of place that runs deep into the collective imagination.

Sunday 25th February 2024, 7.30pm Tickets £9