Readings: Small Press Takeover

Small Birds Press poets: three people stand in front of a screen with a purple Small Press Takeover poster on it. A table with a display of items from the press is to the left of them. From left: Cat Chong holding their receipt poem Dear Rain; Caroline Harris holding an origami paper deer; May Dearlove with Singing Bird Box. With thanks to Briony Hellon-Hughes.

Small Birds Press had a packed room and attentive audience in Stewart House, part of the Senate House complex in Bloomsbury, London, for its first solo set of performances. I was also able to show a selection of the pamphlets and book art that I’ve produced with the press since 2021 – which adds up to 10 publications now. 

Part of the Small Press Takeover series, hosted by the Poetics Research Centre at Royal Holloway, the event celebrated the launch of cuteswarm volume 1 and the second edition of Canine Or/The Mesh of Metaphor, plus readings by Cat Chong and May Dearlove. I also gave the audience a sneak peek of The Taro as Deer 78-card deck – for which I have big plans in 2026.

Cat read from our collaborative boxed collection Deer/Dear and screened the Dis/Content collective’s An Archive of These Dreamings. May performed from her handmade innovative folded pamphlet, Singing Bird Box. We are currently working together to develop a version that can be produced as an edition with Small Birds Press in 2026 (the current version is all hand-collaged and hand-painted!). 

Cat Chong is a poet, publisher, and essayist who completed their PhD in medical humanities at NTU, Singapore as a Nanyang President’s Graduate Scholar in 2024. They are the author of publications such as Plain Air: An Apology in Transit, 712 stanza homes for the sun and Dear Lettera 32, among others. They are a co-founder of the Crested Tit Collective, the digital editor at Osmosis Press, and an editor at Pamenar Press.

May Dearlove is a writer, performer and creative practice PhD researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London exploring a poetics of cuts, tears and openings in bookworks. Trained at the London School of Speech and awarded the LAMDA Lillian Cooper Prize, May also received a Paul Hamlyn Bursary and has been nominated for the Forward Prize best single poem.

It was so lovely to be able to share these works with the audience and talk about them and the press. It was a real milestone event for Small Birds Press.