Autumn 2025 launches

Canine Or/The Mesh of Metaphor: an open pamphlet printed on tracing paper with poem text overlain by loops, lines and islands printed from an ink drawing.

When I first set up Small Birds Press, it was primarily to publish the handmade poetry pamphlets, ribbons and cards that I developed during my creative practice PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London. Since finishing that in 2024, I’ve been thinking about how to continue publishing these kinds of poetic works – now from new projects – and how to grow the press and its reach.

I’ve begun some collaborations, with the aim of publishing more work by other poets, and am planning to set up or be part of more events and readings. The aim is to organise launches into two main publishing windows each year: in the spring and autumn. Although additional works may come out at other times – such as for the Frome Publishing Fair, which I'll have a table at this year on 4 July.

This autumn, I have released a second edition of Canine Or/The Mesh of Metaphor, a pamphlet I started working on during the first year of my PhD but that I only finalised and editioned this summer. Launched at the Paper Ink Print festival at Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington, that first edition sold out at the Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall, London in October – and so did the Zerkall paper I had used for the cover. Instead of 100gsm Rough, the second edition covers are on 100gsm Zerkall Smooth. There is a small difference in texture, but both are lovely, creamy papers.  

Cuteswarm volume 1: Overhead view of sets of three small scrolls, each wrapped around the centre with embroidery thread in a different colour – yellow pink, sage green, black, turquoise – each set in round glass-lidded aluminium tin, packed into a cardboard box on a green cutting mat.

The second new release is cuteswarm volume 1. This is the first work I’ve made an edition of from my ‘Insect Interventions’ project. The basis for this is a daily journal that I kept for six months in 2024-25, logging my everyday interactions with insects and other small invertebrates – mainly around my home and garden. Each of this set of poems is about an ‘intervention’ during September and October 2024. They are named for the insect (or other invertebrate) and printed on to the precious off-cuts of that Zerkall Rough paper from the first edition of Canine Or.

There’ll be more about the collaborations, and planned spring launches, in upcoming newsletters – another thing I’m aiming to be more organised about this coming year.