The Glue Factory July newsletter
This monthly newsletter is to let you know about forthcoming events and/or
publications involving writers and creative practitioners I admire, all of whom have
taken part in our online gatherings over the last few years and who will therefore be
familiar to many of you.
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By way of introduction
‘Poetry,’ said Ezra Pound, ‘is news that stays news.’ Here’s a short poem by Auden
written nearly sixty years ago, prompted by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Ogres come and ogres go, but there are always ogres.
‘August 1968’ by W. H. Auden
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
© The Estate of W.H. Auden.
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New publisher alert
Eile is a new independent publisher founded and run by Gav Clarke and John
O’Donoghue, with a primary interest in developing new writing and reviving
neglected work from and / or about the Irish diaspora.
The name of the press is the Irish word meaning ‘other’. We seek to showcase the
work of writers and artists informed by diasporic experience, and by identities
affirmed in the face of a ‘hostile environment’. Their first publication is a parallel text
edition from a 17th century Irish poet, and future plans embrace a catholic range of
subject, format and genre
Poems of Aogán Ó Rathaille
A series of new translations by Brian O’Connor are
presented alongside the original Irish of Aogán Ó
Rathaille (c.1670–1726). O’Connor provides a
translator’s note and Professor Declan Kiberd
provides an engaging, informative foreword on this
great poet of lament whose verse bears witness to the
demise of the civilisation that nurtured him.
It’s a beautifully designed and produced volume, and
just £10. Order direct from the publisher here.
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Susanna Crossman klaxon
To celebrate the paperback release of Home Is Where We Start, her critically
acclaimed memoir, Susanna will be @literatureworks.bsky.social Exeter Custom
House, online and in-person on Saturday 12th July between 6.30-7.30pm.
More details here.
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Current and forthcoming fictions
176 Interruptions
A welcome expansion of the original 99 Interruptions
(published in 2022) by the author and publisher Charles
Boyle. Published in July and available to pre-order here.
‘Where sheer readerly pleasure is concerned nothing
published in 2022 has topped Charles Boyle’s 99
Interruptions, a book so brief it possesses no page
numbers, each ‘interruption’ comprising its own section
and limited to a few hundred words at most. Some of these
are aphoristic, others personal in nature, many of them both. “Interruptions”, Boyle
writes, “are gentle or not-so-gentle reminders that we have no God-given right to behere at all” … A quiet book and one which increases the overall measure of quiet in
the world of the reader, like a hot shower on a cold day. Just what I needed this year.’
– Nathan Knapp, Books of the Year, Review 31
The Groundsman
The Groundsman is the debut novel by Barbellion prize
winner Lynn Buckle. It delves into the fractured lives of a
family blemished by a darkly disturbing past. The secrets
kept hidden over multiple generations taint them all and as
events spiral out of control in a cycle of violence, none of
them will escape. The narrative is told from the perspective
of five individual family members.
Published by Epoque Press and available here for just £8.99
Toothpull of St Dunstan
My review of Kevin Davey’s latest novel Toothpull of St Dunstan appeared online
last month in Review 31
If you read a more original and wildly inventive novel this
year, the chances are it will be by the same author.
Here’s a review by Will Davies in the Times Lit Supp who
calls it ‘a superb adventure in avant-garde historical
fiction.’
You can buy it direct from the publishers here.The Benefactors
Wendy Erskine’s debut novel The Benefactors is now published by Holder and
Staughton and has been attracting constant rave reviews. She had had plenty of
media attention over the past few weeks, and a highlight was this cultural profile in
The Observer on 7th June. One of many fine reviews was this, in the Financial
Times.
I’m very keen to hear the audio
book, narrated by Wendy and
featuring around fifty other
Belfast voices - friends and family
for the most part, reflecting the
novel’s polyphonic structure.
Details here.
Its hour come round at last…
Bluemoose Books invite you to the launch of BEAST
the new novel by Lulu Allison at Waterstones
Dorchester
31 July, 6.30 pm
It’s a novel from the author of Salt Lick and involves the
Faust myth, a rabbit, a model village and an opera. So
that ticks all my boxes and I’m halfway through.
Recommended! (But not yet available to order on the Bluemoose website.)
We Live Here Now by C. D. Rose
Another established favourite, Chris Rose’s next book will
be published by Melville House on August 7th. From the
publisher’s website:
When visitors to a famous conceptual artist's installation
start mysteriously disappearing, the aftershocks radiate
outwards through twelve people who were involved in the
project, changing all of their lives, and launching them on
a crazy-quilt trajectory that will end with them all together at
one final, apocalyptic bacchanal.
Mixing illusion and reality, simulacra and replicants, sound artists and death
artists, performers and filmmakers and theorists and journalists, We Live Here
Now ranges across the world of weapons dealers and international shipping
to the galleries and studios on the cutting edge of hyper-contemporary art. It
spins a dazzling web that conveys, with eerie precision, the sheer
strangeness of what it is like to be alive today.
The first dozen pages of We Live Here Now literally made me gurgle with pleasure.
This is a rare event for me as a reader. And it got better after that.
Read an extract online here.
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Current and forthcoming non-fictions
The Carbon Arc is is a sequel to The Hinge of Metaphor (2023), to which I was
delighted to contribute an essay about Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry. It’s
published by Vanguard Editions, edited by Richard Skinner and features essays by
Marina Benjamin, Jonathan Coe, Jude Cook, Rob Doyle, Wendy Erskine,
Gareth Evans, Maria Fusco, David Gaffney, Karen Krizanovich, Sam Mills,Nicholas Royle, David Savill, Richard
Skinner, Christiana Spens, Christina
Tudor-Sideri and Anne Worthington.
It’s published at some point this summer,
perhaps in August, but no date has been
announced and it’s not (at the time of
writing) available to order. Look out for this.
Ghost Stations: Essays and Branchlines by Patrick McGuinness (CB editions)
Patrick McGuinness – poet, novelist, translator, editor,
critic and speaker of several languages – writes in Ghost
Stations about his personal history, the unofficial histories of
places in which he has lived, and some of the lesser known
byways of European literature and art. He re-opens
branchlines closed for ‘efficiency’. He notices the
extraordinary hiding in plain sight – in the local, the
mundane. His book is an act of resistance and modest,
undogmatic revelation. Published in September 2025;
available now for pre-order here
I’m reading these essays at the moment and rationing myself to one a day because I
want this collection to last. I’ve been looking at images of Bouillon, the author’s
childhood home in Belgium, which he describes with wonderful clarity and accuracy..
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Omnishambles
When the crowdfunded publisher Unbound declared bankruptcy earlier this year it
left a lot of struggling, hard-up authors out of pocket.
The BBC Radio 4 consumer programme You and Yours featured this https://
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002d117 (from 19:12 onwards). I get the impression
there’s more to emerge about this disgraceful episode.
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Podcast Corner
For humdrum practical reasons there's no episode of The Last King of Elmet this
month. Co-presenter Kevin Boniface announced that, as his book Round About
Town isn't available in print at the moment, you might like to know that the audio
version can still be found in all the usual podcast places. Here it is on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/show/7qOeBoD...
One of my favourite books of recent years, Round About
Town is a collection of observations made over the years
in the course of Kevin’s early morning postal round in
Huddersfield. It’s one of the few books I know that’s best
read first thing in the morning, before getting up. He’s a
brilliant watcher, a one-man mass observation
movement, recording things that most of us wouldn’t
even notice, let alone describe in detail. It’s drolly
hilarious. I wasn’t aware that there’s a recorded version
and will look forward to hearing it, perhaps with a nice
cup of tea and a sit-down.
In late May I recorded a Bloomsday podcast for Robin Allender, who curates a
substack called The Allender Calender (with the lovely design below (inspired by the
Berthold Wolpe cover of The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes). This was
sharedonline on Monday June 16th (Bloomsday, of course) and, if you feel a need tohear me gassing on and on about Joyce and his
cultural legacy you can listen to it here.
(In last month’s newsletter I urged you to listen to an
earlier episode in this series - an absolutely
extraordinary and illuminating interview with the author
Evie King whose book Ashes to Admin: Tales from the
Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer (2023) is a
profound and intensely moving account of her unusual
job.) Other podcasts in this series are archived here.
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For when there’s nothing on the telly
Here’s me in a 90-minute conversation with the great Gerry Fialka last month - the
most enjoyable and unpredictable interview I’ve ever done.
We covered a lot of ground: truth, meaning, consciousness, memory, managing
enemies, Marshall McLuhan, Derek Parfit (the moral philosopher), consequentialism,
Ken Dodd, voodoo, religion, Gilbert Adair, Artificial Intelligence, Dr Johnson, literary
hacks, Tom Waits, Finnegans Wake, gossip, Beckett’s fountain pen, Audre Lorde,
Captain Beefheart, Christopher Hitchens, insomnia, timor mortis, Ezra Pound andmuch more.
Gerry has recorded and shared more than 600 of these extended
interrogations with writers, musicians, academics, critics and other creative riff-raff.
I’ve listened to a handful of these (with the Joyce scholars Sam Slate and Finn
Fordham) and they’re compelling, enormously entertaining and dangerously
addictive. The kind of conversations you don’t get to hear so much these days.
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Q: What’s green and clammy?
A: The latest issue of the transatlantic literary quarterly
Exacting Clam - issue 17, the Summer 2025 number.
Full details here (and have a truffle around the website
for plenty of fine writing from the likes of Glue Factory
alumni such as Paolo Albani, David Henningham, P.
J. Blumenthal, Kevin Boniface, Gerry Feehily, Jake
Goldsmith, Oscar marvel, Melissa McCarthy, Kirsten
Mosher, Paolo Pergola, C. D. Rose, Paul Stanbridge, Julian Stannard,
Guillermo Stitch, Venetia Welby and many, many others.
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This just in
The Iris Murdoch Birthday Lecture (an online event entirely new to me) is on
Tuesday 15th July from 7:30, and will feature Miles Leeson, Director of the Iris
Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester. Full details and tickets
available here. Can, and should Iris Murdoch, born in Dublin, count as an Irish writer?
Her brilliant first novel (not her best but my absolute favourite) owes an explicit debt
to Beckett’s Murphy and is (for my money) among the very best novels set in
London. Also among the most convincing depictions of a male character (Jake
Donaghue) by a woman writer.
We were in Dublin last month for two nights. The first was the launch of my latest
book A Crumpled Swan at Hodges Figgis bookshop, and here are some pictures of
that, with thanks to all who came.
Ronán Hession, DC and Stephanie Ellyne. Abigail Parry, DC and Wendy Erskine
Abigail Parry (3rd from left) and friends Actor Barry McGovern and DCBarry and Rónán Abigail, DC and Wendy
The following night I hosted a Dada cabaret at the James Joyce Centre with Jacob
and Rónán Hession (performing as Mumbling’ Deaf Ro), the novelist and poet Nuala
O’Connor and performer Stephanie Ellyne. This was enormous fun and we’ve been
invited back for future events, so thinking caps on.
Gas from a burner (IYKYK) Nuala O’ConnorJacob and Rónán Hession
Stephanie Ellyne
A Crumpled Swan: fifty essays about Abigail
Parry’s In the dream of the cold restaurant is
available to order here.
And if you read it and like it would, you be kind
enough to post a review on Goodreads
(because, I’m told, this is now the best way to
promote books from indie presses with limited
marketing resources. My previous book
Multiple Joyce attracted some wonderful
reviews))
Post on Goodreads here. Thank you!Still plugging away: with Dublin milliner and Joyce lookalike John Shevlin
And finally…
As mentioned in every newsletter we’re working with Jake Goldsmith and others to
re-launch the Barbellion Prize. This, you’ll know, is a
prize for disabled writers which Jake created, funded
and ran single-handedly. For health reasons it’s been on
hiatus for the past two years, but will be back in
September. Special thanks to Gav Clarke who is
currently working on the new website.
Keep watching the skies.
That’s all for now. If you’re still reading this, thank you.
DavidPS Authors and indie publishers and creative practitioners of all kinds - let me know
if you have a book coming out or a project you’d like to promote and I’ll be happy to
include details in future newsletters. These will be monthly, more or less, throughout
the year, and I’d appreciate any notifications at least a week before the next issue is
due out. And do let me know if you’d rather not be on the mailing list and I’ll happily
stop badgering you. D.
