Category: Horseshoe Press (Page 1 of 2)

THAMES VALLEY TEXAS

October 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I just read some of this volume at the Open Book reading is Thames Valley Texas (updates at link above or direct here https://shaunbelcher.com/writing/?cat=106)

This is a kind of auto-biography of myself and my hometown of Didcot where I lived for a good part of 30 years. The title is a reference to the love of country music that my family had instilled in me from a young age and the experience of hearing Dolly Parton at full volume drifting across the estate from the working-men’s club on a saturday night.

If I cannot get a publisher to take this chapbook length collection on I will try and publish as a Horsehoe Press pamphlet.

Potentially in future I would like to publish the poems alongside a sequence of photographs I took in 2011-12 for a multimedia project called TRACK which almost but not quite became a PHD in 2018…


TVT1Download

GRASS CLOUDS – COLLECTED POEMS 2002-2022

September 14, 2023 / / 0 Comments
Armitage has been run ragged at left back let’s see what the new boy can do…
Grass Clouds Full Version PDFDownload

One of the fabulous things about the modern poetry scene is the hatred of ‘self-publishing’ as somehow amateur or not professional…a opinion reinforced by those with most to lose i.e. the publishers.


GRASS CLOUDS contains everything I have written as ‘poetry’ since I arrived in Nottingham in 2002 so about 20 years worth

Contains 80 poems and some illustrations.

Includes the following pamphlets and projects:

Drifting Village Poems 2001-2011

Edwin Smith Commission 2014

Burning Books and Buying time 2017 – 2018

My Father’s Things (illustrated) 2019

At the Organ Grinder I shall be reading from the new volume ‘Substitute’ which I am working on now.





GRASS CLOUDS : 20 years on the poetry bench.

July 14, 2022 / / 0 Comments
Armitage has been run ragged at left back let’s see what the new boy can do…
Grass Clouds Full Version PDFDownload

I will be offering this as a free download from this evening as it Bastille day.
GRASS CLOUDS contains everything I have written as ‘poetry’ since I arrived in Nottingham in 2002 so about 20 years worth

Contains 80 poems and some illustrations. I will be reading from it on Tuesday August 2nd at the Organ Grinder Canning Circus with Neil Fulwood who celebrating his new Smokestack Press publication.

Includes the following pamphlets and projects:

Drifting Village Poems 2001-2011

Edwin Smith Commission 2014

Burning Books and Buying time 2017 – 2018

My Father’s Things (illustrated) 2019

At the Organ Grinder I shall also be reading from the new volume ‘Substitute’ which due in Fall 2023.





Fishing in Fog: Thames Valley Texas

June 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

FISHING IN FOG

A winter Sunday, fog and frost

Two figures climbing a stile

Boots crunching crisp grass underfoot

Head toward the Thames at Clifton

My father not yet seventy, still working

And I back home for a day’s fishing

Struggling with tackle and reels in the cold

Sit expecting nothing, no fish bite in this weather

Talk about things, my grandparents

The cost of renting, share a flask of tea

Steam rising across his face as he pours it

Lines taught in the brittle air, disappearing

Then slowly the sun starts to lift the fog

The opposite bank starts to appear

A moorhen skirts the bank, swans drift by

Beyond the fog a dog barks endlessly

For a few hours we hold on to hope

Stare back into the white eternal glare

Of mist along the river looking for a bite

Staring at futures unseen, but clearly there

Now and again on a misty morning

Crossing the Trent I see father and sons trudging

Through the mist and rain together, silent

Sharing thoughts, hopes, jokes, together

Their lives unravelling like lines in the air.

Burning Books: Horseshoe Press Mini Pamphlet No.1

April 18, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The Horseshoe Press

 

http://www.horseshoepress.co.uk

is my self-publishing of poetry website.

The latest ‘Mini Pamphlet’ is ‘Burning Books’ published to coincide with Theresa May’s attempt to drive this country even further to the right….

Eight poems about politics, books and poetry to be given away free at the Jermy and Westerman reading on Wednesday 26th of April.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1926856314212991/

 

The Ltd. Ed. of 25 was given away at the reading so that’s it no more. In the tradition of pamphleteers of the 18th century..subversive and gone…..

Towns on Shallow Hills – Horseshoe Press No.1 1990

June 29, 2016 / / 0 Comments

townsfront

 

In 1990 I had a short temporary job at The Poetry Library in London. Whilst there I was inspired to both continue writing poetry and met some wonderful individuals like Ivor Cutler and Michael Donaghy (over the counter). I also met some arses but such is poetry. The job was very menial and weekend cover. I lasted six months then cracked as travelling all weekend from Didcot not an option. Here a pamphlet I ‘re-directed’ the photocopier at the South Bank to produce.

I sold 25 copies.

I also used illustrations in the booklet for the first and last time.

The poems stand up despite the passage of time. The Carver influence still there but I also started looking at Paul Strand, Edwin Muir, Scottish Poetry in general….this pre move to Edinburgh. I also fortunate to meet and hear read C.K.Williams, Tess Gallagher and others whilst at South Bank….they were reading for Maura Dooley in Voice box. Jo Shapcott and Lavinia Greenlaw also worked there but I was pretty much ignored as ‘downstairs’ staff…

The poem The Ice Horses became the Shore Poets anthology title in 1996.

Read The Ice Horses


HERE

 

 

 

The Tithe Machine – Poems 1981-1985

June 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

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titheM newcountry

 

My first poems from 1981-1985 after art college. Some were published in the first volume of a’The New Magazine’ then just started by Gerard Woodward who  went on to be a well known poet and novelist.
Unsure of my writing I used the  ‘David Bell’ alter ego.

32 poems including the sequence ‘The New Country’ from 1985.

1981-5 never shown these to anyone since. Post art college first poems..reading Pasternak and Heaney…Bunting and W.C.Williams…and a hefty bit of John Masefield and Edward Thomas..love poems to a non-existent mythical England…32 poems including the mad The Moon Over Henley my version of Bunting and T.S. Elliot..I kid you not…with some Echo and The Bunnymen in there too:-)

32 poems because same number as Hughes ‘Hawk in th Rain’…along with Heaney a major influence the only four poetry books I owned at art college were Heaney’s ‘ Death of a Naturalist’,  Hughes’ book and Sylvia Plath’s’Colossus’ and Thom Gunn ‘Sense of Movement’ .not a bad start:-).

I still have all four..

2016 - 1

The Tithe Machine by Shaun Belcher on Scribd

Natura Morte – The Poems that became Trees 1992

June 13, 2016 / / 0 Comments

rose2

 

In 1992 Whilst living at my parents I joined Didcot and Wallingford Friends of the Earth.

We went on demonstrations (B and Q mahogany etc) with Earth First and raised funds for tree-planting.

I created this small ilustrated poetry booklet and sold 25 at £2 each which equivalent to 25 new trees.

I also took part in the actual tree-planting that happened based on the proceeds.
If I ever take the train back to Didcot I can actually point to the clump of new trees in a field neat Cholsey, Oxon which this book created;-)

I also showed a series of the down-land drawings behind Sir Julian Rose at a meeting on Organic Farming.

My thanks to Beryl Davidson of F.O.E. at the time (and fellow Didcot poet Jonathan Davidson’s mum by the way:-) for helping produce the booklet.

The publication has finally been scanned and the whole thing can be seen here under Publications on this website: NATURA MORTE

Here scans of the individual pages. The poems were all related to green issues and specifically related to animals and insects hence titles.

Six illustrations were placed next to them.

 

I am going to re-release as HPP3 in due course.

natura3

natura2

natura1

Horseshoe Press 1990-92 : 2016 – An old idea revamped

June 12, 2016 / / 0 Comments

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Original Horseshoe Press Pamphlets from 1990 -1992

The Horseshoe Press was first used as my self-publishing name in 1990.

I have just revived it as a method of disseminating more recent work.

I was then working at The Poetry Library in London and part of my job was photocopying thousands (literally) of poetry magazine and information lists which i assure you is mind-numbing work. The library though was lovely and whilst there I produced one full A5 pamphlet and a scattering of aborted ideas for publications. All were to be made on a photocopier! We talking pre-computer days so I assembled the copier templates from photographs, drawings and type written manuscripts!

The new Horseshoe Press website above continues this early series idea.

Here are some photos of the work produced in early 1990s.

horselist

The new poetry available at http://www.horshoepress.co.uk

 

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