Rochford Cottage Bookshop has the following new titles by Jan Napier for sale on-line:
https://rochford-pressbookshop.square.site/s/shop
Rochford Cottage Bookshop is a poetry and small press bookshop selling new and second hand poetry and small press publications. The bookshop is currently on-line and will be at various markets in the Blue Mountains over the coming months.
Rochford Cottage Bookshop has the following new titles available for sale:
https://rochford-pressbookshop.square.site/s/shop
Rochford Cottage Bookshop is a poetry and small press bookshop selling new and second hand poetry and small press publications. The bookshop is currently on-line and will be at various markets in the Blue Mountains over the coming months.
You can purchase Open and Cuando Fui Clandestino / When I Was Clandestine from the Rochford Cottage Bookshop along with other Rochford Press titles https://rochford-pressbookshop.square.site/shop/rochford-press/13
Tim Wright has reviewed Open by Sarah St Vincent Welch and Cuando Fui Clandestino / When I Was Clandestine by Juan Garrido Salgado in Cordite. It is wonderful to see these two Rochford Press books reviewed. It is also great recognition for both Juan and Sarah.
Writing of Open Wright says:
‘Open’ is invoked by St Vincent Welch also in a different sense, that is, different from the way we might think of all poetic language as having the quality of being ‘open’, this being open as an imperative. In other words, the book contains a call towards openness. This comes through in a number of ways: the cover image, slightly reminiscent of a Magritte, depicting rustic window shutters thrown open to reveal an interior ocean; the title poem’s refrain of ‘open me’, and in the prologue, which aestheticises the appeal – the magic – of opening a book specifically, seeming to position this book almost as a grimoire. This latter sense is also apparent in the poem ‘Story Time’, in its evocation of the speed and inventiveness of children’s games, their ability to create worlds: ‘We are old now, he says’ – and then they ‘are’. The boy’s bedroom, in this poem, becomes the interior of a ship, and it’s here the story time of the title begins, embedded within a story already created by the boy, ending: ‘He says, This is where / the old man and woman / left their books. // We read them.’ The interesting thing about this poem, and others in the book with the same theme, is that play is not deprecated or merely observed from an adult’s perspective, but taken seriously and participated in.
Then of Cuando Fui Clandestino / When I Was Clandestine he says:
Images favoured by Garrido Salgado in this chapbook are: blood, flight, shadow, grain and the moon (images of the moon are favoured also by St Vincent Welch). The most striking lunar image is in the final poem, ‘Dentro de tus brazos hay paz . . .’ / ‘. . . In your arms there is peace’ (a title attributed to Ali Cobby Eckermann, a poet who has written intensely moving poems about mothers), that of the ‘luna seca’ / ‘dry moon’, linked with ‘la sangre de nuestra madre’ / ‘the blood of our mother’. ‘Borges dictated . . .’, the poem discussed above, shows a typical way that Garrido Salgado handles these images: in chains of metaphor which work hand in hand with his employment of the long line.
In ‘He Fallado, He Caído’ / ‘I have failed, I have fallen’ the poet reimagines the state murder of his friends under the Pinochet regime. It is hard not to think here of that other Chilean expatriate Roberto Bolaño, whose fiction works again and again the moment of the Pinochet coup, with its lasting effects not just for Chilean but for world history. ‘. . . Otre hombre ha muerto en el Centro de Detención de Naura y la Isla Manus’ / ‘. . . Another man dies at the Nauru & Manus Island Detention Centres’ again tries to imagine a way into horror, as if the poet must take a share of it via imaginative acts of empathy: ‘A refugee died today, and my heart does not beat.’ Both are poems, ultimately, of witness-bearing.
You can read the complete review at http://cordite.org.au/reviews/wright-stwelch-garridosalgado/.
You can purchase Open and Cuando Fui Clandestino / When I Was Clandestine from the Rochford Cottage Bookshop along with other Rochford Press titles https://rochford-pressbookshop.square.site/shop/rochford-press/13
Rochford Press originally published El Asombrado by Les Wicks back in 2015. It was first published as a stand-alone website but after 5 years we are migrating the publication to a readable eBook on the Issuu platform. Accessing El Asombrado will cost $4.99 which will allow you to read the collection on your computer, tablet, phone or other supported device. It will also allow you to download a pdf version to read in your eBook reader of choice.
El Asombrado was Les Wicks 12th book. The title loosely translates to “He Who Watches and is Amazed” The book is a selection of work from over the past 15 years up until 2015 presented in both Spanish & English. The translator, Colombian G. Leogena is a master of the art.
Rochford Press will be trialing the use of the Issuu platform to provide inexpensive access to out of print titles as well as the publication of stand-alone collections, exhibition catalogues and anthologies.
Keep up to date with the latest news from Rochford Press /Rochford Street Review – join our mailing list https://mailchi.mp/919c85ffc8ed/ rochfordstreetreview1
Open, by Sarah St Vincent Welch was reviewed by Les Wicks in the on-line jounal Plumwood Mountain along with Anne Casey’s second collection out of emptied cups. Wicks says of Open:
We the readers should approach a new title looking for some if not all of the following: unity of concept, consistency of poetic exploration, innate veracity and the processes to surprise / enrich / illuminate.
Open meets all these criteria. I love the imagery – have you ever wondered if it was possible for someone to craft a new image from that most observed of phenomena, the moon? St Vincent Welch does it three times: ‘moon lead / bruise’ (5), ‘the new moon follows / like an excited dog’ (9) and the brilliant ‘porthole moon’ (7). Image is not used promiscuously but rather carefully placed like the methodical gardener. Delight in the ‘powder of age’ (2), ‘my breasts are empty sails’ (7), and ‘kneeling bus’ (16), interspersed with a crisp, clear even occasionally vernacular language.
He concludes:
Open, is an enriching book with a reach far beyond its limited number of pages.
You can read the full review at https://plumwoodmountain.com/les-wicks-reviews-open-by-sarah-st-vincent-welch-out-of-emptied-cups-by-anne-casey/
You can oder Open from the Rochford Press Bookshop https://rochfordpress.com/rochford-press-bookshop/
Judith Nangala Crispin is an artist and poet of Bpangerang descent. Her lumachrome glass prints are deeply rooted in the practice of honouring Country by way of memorialising animals and birds who have died. Judith is part of a three woman exhibition, Juno Gemes, Judith Nangala Crispin & Ana Pollak – Three Women Artists In Country, at at Maunsell Wickes at Barry Stern Galleries, 19 Glenmore Road, Paddington, NSW running from Tuesday 17 September until 29 September 2019. https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2019/09/14/gemes-crispin-pollak-exhibition-preview/
As part of the lead up to the exhibition Rochford Press is proud to have published Judith Nangala Crispin’s artist statement online.
Click on the image above to open the document.
The complete range of Rochford Press recent titles are now available from The Little Lost Bookshop, Shop 10, Hapenny Lane, 181 Katoomba Street, Katoomba, New South Wales. They are next to the Blue Mountains Food Co-op so you pick up your organic vegies and a chapbook in the one shop.
Of course if you can’t make it to Katoomba you can always order all Rochford Press titles online at https://rochfordpress.com/rochford-press-bookshop/
Each year, for the past 12 years, the Nortmead Uniting Church have organised an anual exhibition based around the Stations of the Cross. The Stations of the Cross refers to a series of images depicting Christ on the day of his crucifixion and accompanying prayers. Commonly, a series of 14 or 15 images will be arranged in numbered order along a path and the faithful travel from image to image, in order, stopping at each station to say the selected prayers and reflections.
The curators at the Northmead Uniting Church each year approach 15 artists to produce work representing each station. As the curators state “We do not ask artists to participate because they are religious or not religious; they are always asked becuase we think they have the ability to address significant life questions through their art practice”.
The 2019 exhhibition, which ran from 8 April to 21 April at the Northmead Creative & Performing Arts High School, featured, as Station 4, Anne Graham’s Via Dolorosa. This Station represents Jesus meeting his mother as he carries the cross.
Describing the inspiration for the work Graham writes:
I have been reading the poems of Mohammad Ali Maleki, an Iranian poet who has been living in deention on Manus Island; he writes about many things but often about his mother and his dreams of being with her and losing her, he became a part of this work about a mother losing her son; his poems filled me profound sadness. The hands are for all mothers reaching out to their sons.’
“I saw a hand stretching out to me – it was my mothers hand”
from The Migrant Child by Mohammad Ali Maleki in Truth in the Cage Rochford Press 2018
Truth in the Cage is available through the Rochford Press bookshop https://rochfordpress.com/rochford-press-bookshop/
When I Was Clandestine / Cuando Fui Clandestino by Juan Garrido Salgado, Rochford Press, 2019, will be launched by Steve Georganas MP as part of the World Festival Of Poetry and is a feature of the Bilingual Poetry Reading – Reader of the Month. This Thursday 13 June 2019 from 6.30pm at Chateau Apollo, 74 Frome St Adelaide, South Australia. RSVP here – https://www.facebook.com/events/432441780637525/
Come join us for the exciting Adelaide book launch of When I Was Clandestine / Cuando Fui Clandestino by Juan Garrido Salgado. The book will be launched by the Honourable Steve Georganas MP in the delightful devoted space of the Chateau Apollo. Musical performances by Chris Finnen, Lenin Marròn & Lazaro Numa. Food & Drinks provided by Roxie’s (Highly recommended. Yummm) Open Mic for bilingual reading throughout the night.
Juan Garrido-Salgado was born in Chile. He was a political prisoner under the Pinochet regime, but now lives in Adelaide (Australia). He has published six books of poetry and many poems in magazines in Chile, Colombia, Spain, USA and Australia. He translated into Spanish M. T. C. Cronin’s Talking to Neruda Questions (Respondiendo a las Preguntas de Neruda) which was published in Chile in 2005 by SAfo Ediciones. And translated a book of indigenous poetry (Mapuche) from Chile with Steve Brock and Sergio Holas published in Australia 2015.
This launch is a part of the World Festival Of Poetry and is a feature of the Bilingual Poetry Reading – Reader of the Month. Supported by Pablo Neruda Cultural Committee SA (Proceeds from the night will go to support Mapuche Political Prisoners in Temuko – Chile)
Tickets
$15/10 – On the door
RSVP and Rochford Press looks forward to seeing you there.
If you can’t make it to the launch you can order copies of When I Was Clandestine / Cuando Fui Clandestino at https://rochfordpress.com/rochford-press-bookshop/cuando-fui-clandestino-when-i-was-clandestine-by-juan-garrido-salgado/
Looking for a gift for Mother’s Day. The don’t delay – order a poetry book from Rochford Press! There is a ever expanding list of titles to choose from and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping to disseminate some of the best writing in Australia today.
Browse the bookshop now https://rochfordpress.com/rochford-press-bookshop/
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