Dates

• Existence: Established 1995

Biography

Barque Press was founded by Andrea Brady and Keston Sutherland in Cambridge in 1995, where they produced books on the Caius College photocopier late at night with the aid of the college librarian, and hand-collated and stapled pamphlets for distribution in local bookstores and at CCCP. With the aid of a grant from the Arts Council in 2005 it expanded and developed an online presence and distribution network, and now exists as a small enterprise split between them in London and Brighton.

It specialises in non-conformist Anglophone poetry. Authors include J. H. Prynne, John Wilkinson, Stuart Calton, Amy De’Ath, William Fuller, Peter Manson, Sean Bonney, Tim Atkins, Simon Jarvis, Emily Critchley, Timothy Thornton, Chris Goode, David Marriott, Peter Middleton, Brian Kim Stefans, Elena Rivera, and others; Brady and Sutherland have also published their own work with the press. In addition to numerous books and pamphlets, Barque has produced a DVD from a poetry conference held in Guangzho, China, and four CDs, which include spoken word performances by a variety of artists alongside improvisational music. The latter are an offshoot of the press magazine, Quid, an irregular and motley array of poetry, prose, and critical essays.

Though Barque has always been a haphazard and slipshod enterprise, it is recognised as one of the most important small presses in the UK at the start of the 21st century. Barque books have been included in displays at the Bury Text Festival, the Berlin Book Fair and the Kiosk project at the ICA and other international venues, and reviewed in the Guardian, TLS, the New Statesman, the New York Post, The Liberal, Books from Scotland, Chicago Review and Jacket, among other magazines. Barque was also a focus of Matthew Sperling’s essay ‘Books and the Market: Trade Publishers, State Subsidies, and Small Presses’ in the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, ed. Peter Robinson (2013).

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