Flambard is a small independent press that nourishes developing talent, particularly new and neglected writers. Poetry forms the backbone of the list, but Flambard now publishes some fiction as well.
It’s Just the Beating of My Heart
Richard Aronowitz's eagerly awaited second novel is published by Flambard in March.
An art dealer with a fading reputation, John Stack finds solace in alcohol-fuelled walks through a Gloucestershire valley. His wife has left him, taking their daughter Bryony with her, and John finds himself increasingly drawn towards a beautiful and enigmatic neighbour. Told in sparkling poetic language, It’s Just the Beating of My Heart is a story of loss, heartbreak and hope by the author of the acclaimed Five Amber Beads.
A launch event for It’s Just the Beating of My Heart will take place at the Fulham Road branch of Daunt Books (158-164 Fulham Road, London SW10 9PR) on Thursday, 4th March 2010 from 6.30 to 8.30pm. Please RSVP to if you would like to attend. There will be drinks and snacks, as well as a reading from the novel.
Breath
In two short months in 2005, Ellen Phethean’s life was brought to a halt. In April she lost her close friend and long-time collaborator Julia Darling to breast cancer; then in June, her husband, composer Keith Morris, and close friend musician Joe Scurfield were killed in a hit-and-run accident. In despair and turmoil, all she could do was write: to make sense of the past and to come to terms with the present.
The poems in Breath chart the course of the last few years, reflecting on childhood, family life, the cultural landscape of Newcastle upon Tyne and how it all seemed to lead to these events. There is sadness and anger here, but also humour and candid observation. Journeys and water crossings are recurrent themes in poetry that explores love, loss and the life that insists we carry on.
Background Music
Cynthia Fuller’s new collection is concerned with personal histories and how we begin to retrace the paths that lead from then to now. In Background Music we discover the stories behind landscapes, families and individuals, as Cynthia Fuller reflects on how choices made and chances taken have shaped the present. Here are secret glimpses of her parents on holiday in the 1930s and the grandmothers she never knew as she looks for continuities between generations and the underlying rhythm connecting the different selves we have been.
Springing From Catullus
In Springing From Catullus, a new version of all Catullus’s surviving work, Christopher Pilling’s approach is not that of a translator aiming at literal accuracy. Rather he attempts to capture a tone and a voice, somewhat in the manner of Robert Lowell's ‘Imitations’, to give modern readers the feel that the poems had for Catullus’s own audience. As Pilling says in his Introduction, some of his versions ‘don’t quite go where his go, or go further’: as the title suggests, these versions arise, indeed, from a careful consideration of what Catullus wrote, but with the added spring of Pilling’s characteristic wit, inventiveness and virtuoso rhyming.
Night Train
Night Train is a collaboration between artist Birtley Aris and poet Sean O’Brien. The book is presented as a poet-artist’s sketch-come-notebook, in which the text as well as the artwork is hand drawn. This is a world of steam-trains, platforms and railway landscapes glimpsed by night, with a buried tale of love and madness. It is an intensely romantic English world in the tradition of Eric Ravilious and John Piper.
As well appearing in paperback, Night Train is also available as a limited-edition hardback, individually signed and numbered by the authors. To buy the hardback at £18.99 send a cheque directly to Flambard or go to our partners at Inpress.
The Legend of Liz & Joe
It’s 2008 and Joe Gladstone’s North Cumbrian gourmet guesthouse is losing a packet, not least because of the unusual requirements he makes of his would-be guests. Meanwhile, his wife Liz has embarked on her first extramarital affair at the age of seventy, and has started having spiritual visions. The Legend of Liz & Joe was published on 1 July.
John Murray was born in West Cumbria and now lives in Brampton, near Carlisle. He has published a collection of stories, Pleasure, for which he received the Dylan Thomas Award in 1988, and nine critically acclaimed novels, including John Dory, which won a Lakeland Book of the Year Award in 2002, and Jazz Etc, which was longlisted for the Man-Booker Prize in 2003.
 |
 |
 |
Web site design by Cornwell Internet.
Page last updated on 31st January 2010.
Flambard Press Ltd is a non-commercial, not-for-profit limited company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 05983763.
Registered office: Holy Jesus Hospital, City Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2AS.