Vagabond Press 2021 survival fund
Donation protected
Who are we?
Vagabond Press is a small literary press based in Sydney, Australia. For two decades we have published a range of established and emerging poets from Australia and more recently Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Our books have won many of the major literary prizes in Australia, been praised by critics and taught at universities around the world.
In February 2020, the Marrickville floods destroyed around 2000 books, our book shelves and other odds and ends. By the time we had cleaned up the damage, COVID hit and we have been struggling since with book sales dropping off a cliff over the last few months. We have kept a roof over our books thanks to support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Mothership Studios and a handful of our writers and friends.
We are now trying to rebuild by seeing ten new titles into print in 2021. This campaign will support three of the ten titles, presenting new work from three major contemporary poets, one from Australia and two from Japan. It will also cover a recent $2000 shipping charge we're struggling to pay.
Why go fund me?
Right now the future of Vagabond Press remains uncertain. Unlike the majority of poetry publishers in Australia, we do not have university support or a university salary to draw from to cover the costs of publishing our writers' books. We believe poetry is essential to culture and that the books we have published over twenty years have helped expand the range of contemporary literature and added to the inner lives and imaginations of readers. We are dedicated to seeing new work into English from other languages, especially within Asia Pacific, to facilitate connection, community and a recognition of the common ground, joys and struggles shared across cultures.
What will donations be used for?
This campaign is aimed to help us start to rebuild in 2021. In order to survive, we need to continue to bring out new work.
Funding will contribute to costs related to producing the following titles: LK Holt's 'Capacity', Tanikawa Shuntarō's 'Ordinary People' and Shinkawa Kazue's 'Selected Poems' (see below for more details), along with a recent shipping bill.
For twenty years we've scrapped by. We were fortunate to survive 2020 and are now trying to rebuild in 2021. Every donation will help us survive, keep our backlist available, and see new titles into publication in the first half of 2021.
If you're in a position to support us, please help keep us publishing innovative and award-winning contemporary literature from around the world. The more support, the more books we will be able to publish and the more likely it is we will survive 2021. If you can, please help by donating and/or sharing the campaign with your friends.
***
LK Holt, 'Capacity'
LK Holt’s 'Capacity' is a volume with two chambers. The first, ‘Modern Woman Sonnets’, comprises twenty-six wild and precise love poems, which can be traced back to those of the Renaissance original Louise Labé. These sonnets are versions, hardly, or echoes, clearly, of Labé’s, and which perpetuate the internal logic of her love. The book’s second part, ‘Demons’, contains poems of a dark and numinous music, contemplating myriad forms of possession. The lyrical, transformative structures of Holt's poems provide ‘a field of force’ for the daimonic to play, within the self and without. The darting humour and lucid astonishments of her previous work can be found in 'Capacity'. LK Holt's previous collection 'Birth Plan' (Vagabond Press), was shortlisted for the 2020 Victorian Premiers' Award for Poetry and the 2020 Prime Minister's Award for Poetry. She has been the recipient of the NSW Premiers' Award for Poetry, the Grace Leven Prize, and longlisted for the ALS Gold Medal.
Shinkawa Kazue (新川和江), 'The Selected Poems of Kazue Shinkawa'
'The Selected Poems of Kazue Shinkawa' covers the oeuvre of one of the greatest poets of the modern Japan, covering a span of 60 years from her debut book 'Nemuri isu' (The Sleeping Chair), published in 1953, to her latest collection Bookend. It contains about 50 poems from more than 10 volumes, including such monumental work as 'Please Do Not Bundle Me', 'Not a Metaphor', 'Odes to the Soil' and poems for children. The introduction by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto follows the footsteps of Shinkawa’s extraordinary journey as an iconoclastic woman poet trying to reconcile Western modernity with her Japanese literary heritage. All translations are new, done especially for this collection by the unique team of Takako Lento, a renowned translator dedicated to modern Japanese poetry, and Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, a leading contemporary Japanese poet.
Tanikawa Shuntarō (谷川 俊太郎), 'Ordinary People'
Shuntarō Tanikawa is one of the most widely read and highly regarded of living Japanese poets, both in Japan and abroad, and a frequent subject of speculations regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several of his collections, including his selected works, have been translated into English, including 'Watashi' translated by William I. Eliott and Kazuo Kawamura. This edition of 'Ordinary People' will be translated by Takako Lento.
Vagabond Press is a small literary press based in Sydney, Australia. For two decades we have published a range of established and emerging poets from Australia and more recently Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Our books have won many of the major literary prizes in Australia, been praised by critics and taught at universities around the world.
In February 2020, the Marrickville floods destroyed around 2000 books, our book shelves and other odds and ends. By the time we had cleaned up the damage, COVID hit and we have been struggling since with book sales dropping off a cliff over the last few months. We have kept a roof over our books thanks to support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Mothership Studios and a handful of our writers and friends.
We are now trying to rebuild by seeing ten new titles into print in 2021. This campaign will support three of the ten titles, presenting new work from three major contemporary poets, one from Australia and two from Japan. It will also cover a recent $2000 shipping charge we're struggling to pay.
Why go fund me?
Right now the future of Vagabond Press remains uncertain. Unlike the majority of poetry publishers in Australia, we do not have university support or a university salary to draw from to cover the costs of publishing our writers' books. We believe poetry is essential to culture and that the books we have published over twenty years have helped expand the range of contemporary literature and added to the inner lives and imaginations of readers. We are dedicated to seeing new work into English from other languages, especially within Asia Pacific, to facilitate connection, community and a recognition of the common ground, joys and struggles shared across cultures.
What will donations be used for?
This campaign is aimed to help us start to rebuild in 2021. In order to survive, we need to continue to bring out new work.
Funding will contribute to costs related to producing the following titles: LK Holt's 'Capacity', Tanikawa Shuntarō's 'Ordinary People' and Shinkawa Kazue's 'Selected Poems' (see below for more details), along with a recent shipping bill.
For twenty years we've scrapped by. We were fortunate to survive 2020 and are now trying to rebuild in 2021. Every donation will help us survive, keep our backlist available, and see new titles into publication in the first half of 2021.
If you're in a position to support us, please help keep us publishing innovative and award-winning contemporary literature from around the world. The more support, the more books we will be able to publish and the more likely it is we will survive 2021. If you can, please help by donating and/or sharing the campaign with your friends.
***
LK Holt, 'Capacity'
LK Holt’s 'Capacity' is a volume with two chambers. The first, ‘Modern Woman Sonnets’, comprises twenty-six wild and precise love poems, which can be traced back to those of the Renaissance original Louise Labé. These sonnets are versions, hardly, or echoes, clearly, of Labé’s, and which perpetuate the internal logic of her love. The book’s second part, ‘Demons’, contains poems of a dark and numinous music, contemplating myriad forms of possession. The lyrical, transformative structures of Holt's poems provide ‘a field of force’ for the daimonic to play, within the self and without. The darting humour and lucid astonishments of her previous work can be found in 'Capacity'. LK Holt's previous collection 'Birth Plan' (Vagabond Press), was shortlisted for the 2020 Victorian Premiers' Award for Poetry and the 2020 Prime Minister's Award for Poetry. She has been the recipient of the NSW Premiers' Award for Poetry, the Grace Leven Prize, and longlisted for the ALS Gold Medal.
Shinkawa Kazue (新川和江), 'The Selected Poems of Kazue Shinkawa'
'The Selected Poems of Kazue Shinkawa' covers the oeuvre of one of the greatest poets of the modern Japan, covering a span of 60 years from her debut book 'Nemuri isu' (The Sleeping Chair), published in 1953, to her latest collection Bookend. It contains about 50 poems from more than 10 volumes, including such monumental work as 'Please Do Not Bundle Me', 'Not a Metaphor', 'Odes to the Soil' and poems for children. The introduction by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto follows the footsteps of Shinkawa’s extraordinary journey as an iconoclastic woman poet trying to reconcile Western modernity with her Japanese literary heritage. All translations are new, done especially for this collection by the unique team of Takako Lento, a renowned translator dedicated to modern Japanese poetry, and Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, a leading contemporary Japanese poet.
Tanikawa Shuntarō (谷川 俊太郎), 'Ordinary People'
Shuntarō Tanikawa is one of the most widely read and highly regarded of living Japanese poets, both in Japan and abroad, and a frequent subject of speculations regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several of his collections, including his selected works, have been translated into English, including 'Watashi' translated by William I. Eliott and Kazuo Kawamura. This edition of 'Ordinary People' will be translated by Takako Lento.
Organiser
Vagabond Press
Organiser
Marrickville NSW
