Country of origin Ireland Founded 1967 | Publication types Books | |
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Headquarters location Dublin, Republic of Ireland Founders Michael Smith, Trevor Joyce | ||
New Writers' Press is an Irish small press that specialises in poetry publishing. The press was founded in 1967 by the poets Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce and Smith's wife Irene in response to what they felt to be the stagnant state of Irish poetry at the time. The first volume published by the Press was Joyce’s debut collection, "Sole Glum Trek", which included an editorial by Smith that communicated the purpose of the Press as follows:
The press was very active for the first 12 years of its existence, publishing some 46 items, including the six issues of the journal The Lace Curtain. Since 1979, there have been approximately 12 new titles, some of them in collaboration with British, Canadian and Polish small press publishers.
The press was committed to help revive interest in the modernist tradition in Irish poetry, and to this end they published Thomas MacGreevy's Collected Poems, Brian Coffey's Selected Poems and a special 1930s issue of the journal, all in 1971.
In addition to work by Coffey, MacGreevy, Joyce and Smith, New Writers Press authors included John Jordan, Anthony Cronin, Michael Hartnett, Augustus Young, Jack Spicer, Tom MacIntyre, Patrick Galvin, Paul Durcan, Robert Pawlowski, and Antonio Machado (in Smith's translation).
Notable titles
Poems. Jorge Luis Borges. Translated by Anthony Kerrigan. 1967. The Lace Curtain, Issues 1-6. Ed. Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce. 1969 - 1978 Selected Poems. Brian Coffey. 1971. The Poems of Sweeny, Peregrine. Trevor Joyce. 1976.