Welcome to Worple Press
Worple Press was founded in 1997 and is co-directed by Peter and Amanda Carpenter. We publish collections of poetry, and arts titles. We like to showcase new writing and we welcome diversity of format and approach. Above all, we look for excellence. Read more »
Latest News
John Freeman, whose latest collection is Plato’s Peach, will be reading from his work at two events in October 2022.
Friday 14 October
Ware Arts Centre, Kibes Lane, Ware, Hertfordshire, SG12 7BS
8pm
Admission £5
Tuesday 25 October
John Freeman reads alongside Jonathan Edwards and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch.
Poetry Upstairs at The Melville Centre for Arts, Pen-Y-Pound, Abergavenny NP7 5UD
Doors open at 6:30pm for a 7:00pm start
Entry £5 at the door. Please contact the venue to register then pay on the door. To register, email [email protected] or call Penny on 01873 853167
Elizabeth Cook’s collection When I Kiss the Sky has received a rave review by Ed Reiss in Stand magazine (Stand 233, 20(1) May – July 2022).
“Poetry as flight, song, life, beauty, otherness.”
“Some of Cook’s poems touch on deep mysteries as lightly as Yeats’s long-legged fly.”
“Time and again Cook’s poems sparkle with a word which is risky but exact”
“Cook’s poetry is Heaney-like in being open to the legendary and the marvellous whilst remaining sensuous and grounded. The balance of the collection inclines from earlier poems of innocence to later ones of loss and grief. Throughout, these are ‘springy’ poems of compassion, praise and sustenance.”
Find out more and order a copy of When I Kiss the Sky here
In Finding the Craic, a new piece for the Royal Literary Fund, Elizabeth Cook considers how moments of vitality and connection make writing come alive for the reader.
“When it comes to reading and writing,” Elizabeth writes, “the craic, in my experience, is often to be found in moments that seem to interrupt an established regularity: they insist on their presence and inclusion despite not fitting into any preconceived pattern or expectation.” Read the article on the RLF website.
Elizabeth’s latest collection When I Kiss the Sky was recently reviewed by Merryn Williams in Agenda magazine. – “She is a compassionate, life-enhancing writer”
And Anna Woodford chose When I Kiss the Sky as a Book of the Year for the Poetry Society – “full of tender, memorable writing and some searing elegies in particular” Poetry Society Books of the Year 2021
Find out more and buy a copy of When I Kiss the Sky here.
It gives us great pleasure to announce our second publication for autumn 2021, Elizabeth Cook’s profound and revelatory new collection When I Kiss the Sky.
These poems explore the dynamics of presence and absence, the shapes they make and the continuities between them. There is lament but also affection and delight, along with a strong curiosity about the nature of change. Cook writes with simplicity and intensity, finding vivid and subtle life in what she notices.
A most welcome new collection from Elizabeth Cook: necessary, sustaining poems that brim with luminous insights and remind us time and again that there is another world and it is in this one – Michael Laskey
Find out more and order a copy here!
Review in London Grip
D.A. Prince has reviewed When I Kiss the Sky in London Grip magazine, writing “[The poems’] energy comes from the keenness of her observation and her understanding of how the counter-play of presence and absence can shape poems. […] Attention to pattern, both within nature and human belief, underpins her collection.
So much of this collection deals with the inevitable process of changing and ways of paying attention to it, whether this is by theologists, historians, writers, architects or simply the individual person. It is a thoughtful and observant collection.”
Read the full review online at London Grip