A day of readings and performance at the Weston Library (Bodleian Library) Oxford – Saturday 26 April 2025 – to celebrate: Clutag Press 2000-2025 Archipelago 2: 4 Contents Editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece: Norman Ackroyd Little Skellig Rock, Co. Kerry Julian Bell Meeting…
Category: Blog
Blog
WHAT STALKED THROUGH THE POST OFFICE?
The answer to Yeats’s question is ‘nothing’ emanating from the Clutag Press. After a period of reasonable success in mailing into the Republic of Ireland in the post-Brexit disaster era, we have started to have a high proportion of ‘sales’ bounce back inexplicably from Irish Customs. This despite our providing the correct Customs Form correctly completed, or as correctly as served us well until recently. Other EU countries in which we have customers (France, Germany, Denmark) process our packages, on the same information, without issue. But recently the Republichas seemed to adopt another agenda. We have always hugely valued our Irish customers in the Republic (and charged them the same for P&P as customers on the island of Britain) and…
Archipelago at the Museum of Literature, Ireland
Join us for a celebration of writing about place and nature, and the launch of the fifteenth issue of the literary magazine, Archipelago Tues 7th May, 6.30pm Click here to book for Late HeaneyNicholas Allen, Late Heaney: Poetry and Place after the Nobel Weds 8th May, 10am until 6pm Click here to book for ArchipelagoThe very best of prose, poetry, and song about place and nature of ‘the unnameablearchipelago’, that constellation of islands off the north-west coast of Europe 6.30pm Launch Reception for Archipelago, the 15th issue Andrew McNeillie, The Good Ship PROGRAMME Old Physics Theatre, Museum of Literature Ireland Tuesday 7th May 18:30 Welcome Reception 19:00 Nicholas Allen, Late Heaney: Poetry and Place after the Nobel Wednesday 8th May…
Archipelago reaches a remote corner of the archipelago
Namely, 1 London Bridge Street, LONDON SE1 9GF, as evidenced here: While this is not unprecedented, it is worth recording, like the passage of a comet through the night sky.
The Arc of Our Covenant
We’re pleased to list the Contents of Archipelago 2:3, currently typesetting, for publication as early in 2024 as can be managed. If you’ve not placed an order already, do please consider doing so. It helps us gauge the print-run while guaranteeing that you don’t miss out, as too many people did with 2:2, for which we are looking into the possibility of short run reprint, after we’ve paid the bills for 2:3. With best regards. Editorial Frontispiece: Lyn Youngson – In Memory of a Gannetry Alan Riach – The Arc of Our Covenant Nicholas Allen – Hy-Brasil Moya Cannon – The News from Tramore Michael Longley – Six Poems (‘Sarah’s Goldcrest’, ‘The Otter’s Funeral’, ‘Coracle’, ‘Whoopers’, ‘Jonquils’, ‘Blackcap’) Edna Longley…
THE RENDEZ-VOUS
We’re back, moored up, at the Isle of Whithorn, and working night and day, burning the midnight oil in the Wheelhouse, to prepare the typescript for Archipelago 2:2. Our catch is one of the best (and biggest) we’ve ever landed. So there’s a lot of work to be done, checks and balances, and ‘casting off’, in that other dialect, of the print works, and not the nautical one we so crave the moment we tie up at the harbour wall and find ourselves in dull and deadly lubberdom. As you see, on this last trip, we managed, by expert reading of the stars, to meet up with the intrepid kayaking historian David Gange, inspirational devotee of ‘big seas and small…
All At Sea
This is how we are in August, all at sea, searching the waste of waters, fishing for issue 2:2. There’s only a temp in the office, to package orders, stalk through the Post Office with the mailbag, and drop in at the PO Box. There, the other day, to everyone’s delight, awaiting collection was a copy of the latest issue of the ASLEF Journal (that is the journal of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers & Firemen). We’ve long been in negotiation with ASLEF over a discretionary Archipelago subscription rate for the membership, many of whom have been dropping in at the London Review Bookshop and buying their copies there at the standard rate. This has more than once led…
ARCLIGHT
Welcome aboard the latest addition to the Archipelago fleet. One of our readers came upon her in Dundee harbour on, to be precise, 9 March 2021 CDE (Covid Delta Era) and after a phone-call with the Northern Lighthouse Board, we sealed the deal, well within our Tax year, enabling us to write her off at once, as we prepare to finance 2:2. She was ours in return for twelve copies of Archipelago 2:1 on condition we tow her away promptly. We haggled, starting the bidding at six copies, but the Board would have none of it. So twelve copies it was. A lick of paint and a few new fittings and there we were ready to put out. It was…
Omnium-gatherum
Update: Another superb new review of Lilliput Press’s Archipelago: A Reader (Edited by Nicholas Allen and Fiona Stafford) by Dan MacCarthy was published on 29th January 2022 in the Irish Examiner. Click here to read the review. Further press coverage in the Irish Times from Saturday, December 4th 2021 (click on the image or click here for a more legible version) Omnium-gatherum Here to remind you of Lilliput Press’s Archipelago: A Reader, edited by Nicholas Allen and Fiona Stafford, and launched in Convocation House, Divinity School, The Bodleian Library, Oxford, on 10 November, and by Zoom from the Dublin Literary Festival, the next day. Surely, the ideal Christmas present for all those of an archipelagic persuasion. Here’s what M.…
Until Depth Do Us Part
The Harbour Light . . . . . . . . . . . . lowered and lifted – a canary in a mine-shaft fluttering guttering but unquenched. Lead kindly as she wrangles and haggles for passage through wheeling collisions of light flashed at death’s threshold, hell’s mouth, heaven’s gaping gate, the narrow strait and close scrape, Davy’s Locker and lamp together, rocky seamark and landmark vying on a soul’s darkest before the dawn, gull and gale crying until depth do us part – glass-eyed cod, haddock, monk, on ice – the crew, lids propped, dying to turn in, to drown in sleep until they wake restless to put out again as much for the sake of it as for…
