Latest News

P76 Number 7 – Special Cornelis Vleeskens Tribute Issue

Media Release

P76 Magazine

Issue 7

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from HEATWAVE by Cornelis Vleeskens

P76 Issue 7 will be a special issue devoted to Cornelis Vleeskens and will be guest edited by Pete Spence. The issue will contain a selection of published and unpublished work by Vleeskens and will include poetry, visual poetry and artwork. There will be also be a selection of critical work and reminisces.

We are currently looking for reviews and articles on Vleeskens’ work (published or unpublished) and would be interested in hearing of any memories, reminisces etc.

For further information please contact P76 Magazine p76magazine@gmail.com

The Selected Your Friendly Fascist: Pictures of a Launch

The Selected Your Friendly Fascist was launched by Alan Wearne at the Friend in Hand Hotel in Glebe on Sunday 21 October 2012. Fortunately for such an auspicious occasion many pictures were taken. Here are some of them……

(Copies of The Selected Your Friendly Fascist can be ordered from http://members.optusnet.com.au/rochfordstpress/)

Alan Wearne in the process of launching The Selected Your Friendly Fascist
John Edwards, Co-editor of the original Your Friendly Fascist magazine, recalls the excitement of putting together the magazine.
Joanne Burns reading from The Selected Your Friendly Fascist.
Rae Desmond Jones, editor of The Selected Your Friendly Fascist
Billy Marshall Stoneking reading from The Selected Your Friendly Fascist
Nicholas Pounder’s reading was one of he highlights of the launch.
Joseph Chetcuti traveled from Melbourne to read at the launch
Denis Gallagher reading from The Selected Your Friendly Fascist.
Richard Tipping reminiscing.
Richard James Allen bringing down the house…or at least The Friend in Hand Hotel.
Joanne Burns, Rae Desmond Jones and Joseph Chetcuti.
Photographs by Joseph Chetcuti, Rae Desmond Jones and Francesca Sasnaitis.

Now Available – The Selected Your Friendly Fascist and P76 Issue 6!

Following the ‘glamour’ launch at Glebe’s Friend in Hand Hotel, Rochford Street Press’ two new titles are now available for your reading pleasure from the Rochford Street Press On-Line Store!

The Selected Your Friendly Fascist. Edited by Rae Desmond Jones. ISBN 978-0-646-58605-2. 2012 (Standard Edition – Colour covers, black and white pages $20. Special Launch Edition – Colour covers, full colour pages pages $40).

“Your Friendly Fascist was a poetry magazine so deep underground that it caused tremors among persons of a pious literary persuasion on the dread occasions of its appearance. The magazine served as an outlet for views and feelings which are not expressed in polite company. Your Friendly Fascist was not the only outrageous small literary publication of its time, but it took pleasure in divergent views. Poetry can tend to sombre pomposity, or the self –consciously polite. If there is a secret to the Fascist’s modest success, it is in the energy with which it rode on the un-ironed coat tails of unruly expression. Rae Desmond Jones and John Edwards remained at the helm of the magazine despite frequent inebriation, from the magazine’s beginnings in 1971 to its final burial with absolutely no honours at all in 1986. Rae Desmond Jones has made a selection of material that appeared in YFF and pulled together an creation that sits well with the ratbaggery tradition that was Your Friendly Fascist.”

The Selected Your Friendly Fascist contains work by John Jenkins, Mike Lenihan, Rob Andrew, Denis Gallagher, Adrian Flavell, Peter Brown, Debbie Westbury, Carol White, Billy Ah Lun, Peter Brown, Lis Aroney, Patrick Alexander, Steve Sneyd, Ken Bolton, Nigel Saad, John Edwards, Robert C. Boyce, Rae Desmond Jones, Trevor Corliss, Kit Kelen, Rob Andrew, Jean Rhodes, Larry Buttrose, Joseph Chetcuti, Alamgir Hashmi, Anne Wilkinson, Jenny Boult (aka MML Bliss), George Cairncross (UK), John Peter Horsam, Steven K. Kelen, Irene Wettenhall, Chris Mansell, Robert Carter, Anne Davies, Nicholas Pounder, Cornelis Vleeskens, Andrew Rose, Joanne Burns, Les Wicks, Eric Beach, Ian, Gig Ryan, П. O., Barry Edgar Pilcher, Andrew Darlington, Dorothy Porter, Gary Oliver, Richard Tipping, Micah, Carol Novack, Peter Finch, Evan Rainer, Graham Rowlands, Christopher Pollnitz, Robert Carter, Philip Neilsen, Andrew Chadwick, Stephan Williams, Rollin Schlicht, Philip Hammial, John Peter Horsam, Peter Murphy, Karen Ellis, Richard James Allen, Rudi Krausmann, Paul “Shakey” Brown, Michael Sharkey, Karen Hughes, Susan Hampton, Rory Harris, Pie Corbett and Billy Marshall Stoneking

P76 Issue 6 1993/2012.ISSN 0813 2038. $15

P76 was founded by Mark Roberts and Adam Aitken and the first issue was published in Spring 1983 and over the years has featured work by some of the leading poets and writers of the time. Over the next 8 years another 4 issues were published. Issue 6 of P76 was scheduled to appear during the summer of 1992/93 but, due to a number of issues/incidents and circumstances, it never appeared. Now almost 20 years later P76 Issue 6 is about to finally appear

P76 magazine was an influential literary journal during the 1980′s and the publication of the lost issue 6 will provide a kind of ‘time capsule’ highlighting some amazing writing, some of which would have been lost if the issue didn’t finally see the light of day.

Issue 6 has been edited by Mark Roberts and Linda Adair. It contains work by M T C Cronin, Adrian D’Ambra, Rae Desmond Jones, David J Cookson, Gary Dunne, James Bradley, Coral Hull, Margaret Bradstock, John O’Brien and joanne burns. Review of Victor Kelleher’s Wintering and Andrew McGahan’s Praise. Cover Design and art work by Narelle Adair. Artwork by Karen Jackson and Lucie Adair-Roberts.

Alan Wearne to launch The Selected Your Friendly Fascist – edited by Rae Desmond Jones. Sunday 21 October 2012 at the Friend In Hand Hotel, 58 Cowper Street, Glebe, NSW.

The return of the Gestner Revolution……sort of….

Rochford Street Press is proud, and a little bit surprised, to announce the double launch of P76 Issue 6 & The Selected Your Friendly Fascist, Sunday 21 October 2012 at the Friend In Hand Hotel, 58 Cowper Street, Glebe, NSW

Alan Wearne will launch THE SELECTED YOUR FRIENDLY FASCIST edited by Rae Desmond Jones:

“Your Friendly Fascist was a poetry magazine so deep underground that it caused tremors among persons of a pious literary persuasion on the dread occasions of its appearance. The magazine served as an ou
tlet for views and feelings which are not expressed in polite company. Your Friendly Fascist was not the only outrageous small literary publication of its time, but it took pleasure in divergent views. Poetry can tend to sombre pomposity, or the self –consciously polite. If there is a secret to the Fascist’s modest success, it is in the energy with which it rode on the un-ironed coat tails of unruly expression. Rae Desmond Jones and John Edwards remained at the helm of the magazine despite frequent inebriation, from the magazine’s beginnings in 1971 to its final burial with absolutely no honours at all in 1986. Rae Desmond Jones has made a selection of material that appeared in YFF and pulled together an creation that sits well with the ratbaggery tradition that was Your Friendly Fascist.”

Welcome (Archived)

Welcome to Rochford  Press. Rochford Press was set up in the late 1980s to publish P76 magazine. In all it published 5 issues of P76 which was one of the leading independent Australian Literary magazines of the late 1980’s. It also published 4 books:

  • Les Wicks (Cannibals … Humans Have Soft Centres)
  • Dipti Saravanamuttu (Statistic for the New World),
  • Rob Finlayson (Songs Ov Th City Ov Desire and Fear)
  • Mark Roberts (Stepping Out of Line).

Rochford Street Press emerged from a long slumber in late 2011 and established the on-line review site Rochford Street Review. It will shortly publish two new publications  in a limited hard copy edition. The two publications are:

  • P76 Issue 6 – The Lost Issue. This was an issue of P76 which was being compiled during 1992 and 1993 but, for a number of reasons, never saw the light of day. Now, 19 years later it is finally set to emerge into another century!
  • The Selected Your Friendly Fascist. Your Friendly Fascist was a poetry magazine so deep underground that it caused tremors among persons of a pious literary persuasion on the dread occasions of its appearance. The magazine served as an outlet for views and feelings which are not expressed in polite company. Your Friendly Fascist was not the only outrageous small literary publication of its time, but it took pleasure in divergent views. Poetry can tend to sombre pomposity, or the self –consciously polite. If there is a secret to the Fascist’s modest success, it is in the energy with which it rode on the un-ironed coat tails of unruly expression. Rae Desmond Jones and John Edwards remained at the helm of the magazine despite frequent inebriation, from the magazine’s beginnings in 1971 to its final burial with absolutely no honours at all in 1986. Rae Desmond Jones has made a selection of material that appeared in YFF and pulled together an creation that sits well with the ratbaggery tradition that was Your Friendly Fascist.

We will be posting more details soon. In the meantime, if you would like more information please contact us at contact@rochfordpress.com

Felicity Plunkett on ‘Truth in the Cage’ by Mohammad Ali Maleki

As part of her review of No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani in Australian Book Review, Felicity Plunkett says of Truth in the Cage:

Maleki tends a garden on Manus Island, yet his poems evoke images of the natural world thwarted or gone awry – ‘the autumn leaf grows green’, ‘the moon implodes’, ‘the butterfly flies back to its cocoon’. In an allegory of refoulement, everything in ‘Silence Land’ is turned back: the tree to its seed, the sea to its source, the river to its spring. In the more surreal ‘Myself’, groans swell the sky, the sea becomes stormy and fish ‘[scatter] in fear’.

The book’s first poem, ‘Dream of Death’, begins by addressing readers as ‘my dears’, and implores: ‘please, I ask you, listen’. Both Boochani and Maleki evoke the experience of there being absolutely nothing to do and the impact this has on the mind. Each writer has endured this year after year.

Although Maleki writes of blankness and weariness, in ‘Where is My Name?’, he affirms ‘I won’t neglect to report on these days’. From the ‘cursed city’ of Manus, he writes tender works of witness and consolation commemorating others people’s deaths – Hamed Shamshiripour, who died by hanging, and Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian asylum seeker whose body was washed up on a Turkish beach. Yet for all their gentleness, these are steely poems, refusing silence and namelessness

The complete review of No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison can be read at, https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online-exclusives/5072-felicity-plunkett-reviews-no-friend-but-the-mountains-writing-from-manus-prison-by-behrouz-boochani, and, in the context of contemporary Australian culture and politics, this is an important review about a very important book. It is pleasing to see Maleki’s work linked with Boochani’s.

Truth in the Cage is available from https://rochfordstreetpress.com/rochford-street-press-titles/
No Friend but the Mountain, by Behrouz Boochani, is published by Picador and is available from https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760555382/ 

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