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Arc Publications

Founded in 1969, Arc Publications is the UK's leading publisher of contemporary poetry in translatio

Arc publishes contemporary poetry from new and established writers from the UK and abroad, specialising in the work of international poets writing in English and the work of overseas poets in translation. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians.

26/02/2026

***** Stephen Boyce • Prue Chamberlayne • John Challis • Lynda V. E. Crawford • Neil Elder • Dominic Fisher • George Freek • Rona Fitzgerald • Greg Freeman • Bernadette Gallagher • Maria Isakova-Be…

05/02/2026

Within the Shop of the Divine
by Mary Gilliland
Mary Gilliland, the American poet, essayist, ecologist and activist, is well-known and highly regarded in the USA, and this new poetry collection is her UK first.

"It is impossible not to fall for Within the Shop of the Divine. These are poems abundant in flora and fauna, rich in life and matter and earthed in the spaces and histories they emerge from.

Mary Gilliland’s gift with language, and her open attention to the world affects a kind of communion – between self and space, human and more than human, and between loved ones – that moves as much as it delights.

A pamphlet of grief, recovery and quiet joy from a poet who deserves to be better known in the UK."

- Hannah Copley

"Mary Gilliland brings to her work the rich flavors of the natural world, yet her destination is clearly news of the inner self, its perceptions, its relationships with others. She is not afraid of delight, neither does she shirk the hard tasks of anger, pain, and deep caring."

- Mary Oliver

"Mary Gilliland’s tensile lyric and fluent narrative grasp the sweet otherness in life… a radiant testimony – and a triumph – of an unerring ear I deeply cherish. Mythical and grounded, her sensuously rich language enacts a poetry in which self-concentration brims beyond the far reach of desire, passion, and the self."

- Ishion Hutchinson

"By turns mystical and realist, Mary Gilliland’s intensely musical poems consider global apocalypse but also celebrate the generative power of creativity. Her vision is profound, enduring."

- Alice Fulton
ISBN: 9781911469896
Published October 2025

26/01/2026

🕯️ Holocaust Memorial Day 🕯️

Tuesday 27th January 10.30 am - 12.00 pm

Join us where Jean Boase-Beier and Angela Jarman will be reading poems from the Holocaust and poems of hope. This is a FREE event and there will be refreshments available. We hope to see you all there 🙏🏻📚🎙️

04/12/2025

Collected Poems 1972 - 2024
by Kevin Crossley-Holland
Prize-winning poet Kevin Crossley-Holland has been described by Philip Pullman as ‘a master, a magician and commander of the language’, a view that this eagerly-awaited Collected Poems will undoubtedly support.

"Kevin Crossley-Holland is a master, a magician and commander of the language, the roots of whose work are deeply entwined with ancient patt erns of truth and knowledge. I salute and venerate him."

- PHILIP PULLMAN

"Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Collected Poems is a serious achievement. Underpinning its variety of voices and perspectives is a consistent vision that finds expression in poems at once temporally palimpsestic and geographically grounded, crossing and re-crossing the fine line between the every day and myth. Like the ‘blue hour’ by which they are haunted, they are often elegiac, but always intensely present."

- JANE GRIFFITHS

"He is a poet listening to his own history through the clamour of seabirds and gales and well-caught scraps of this and that which blow across the land. His language has been honed by the Norfolk and Suffolk climate itself and has the polish of split flint."

- RONALD BLYTHE

"With a deep understanding of archaeology, a painterly eye for beauty, and a naturalist’s commitment to sharp observation, Kevin Crossley-Holland has spent a lifetime mining the resources of elegy, myth, lyric, prayer, and dramatic monologue to form delicately crafted meditations on love and loss, time and memory, spiritual longing and emotional growth."

- LUCY NEWLYN

"This is a fantastic collection, and I love it. His poetry is so very rich and so varied, and covers such an impressive amount of ground. There are anthems, war cries, memories, love songs and hymns to the glory of nature, all writt en in language that is clear, robust, and sometimes luminously, breathtakingly beautiful."

- JOANNE HARRIS
ISBN: 9781911469827

16/09/2025

'CATHEDRAL-LIKE' Prue Chamberlayne's poem from our newest publication LIZZARD LOOKS ✨🦎

www.arcpublications.co.uk

02/09/2025

Lizard Looks
by Prue Chamberlayne

The past and distant past creeps through the lines and unsaid words in these poems; they explore how the past forms the present and connects our shared humanity. These are sensual poems, where sound, history and the natural world are dominant. A Madonna points to heaven in a silent French Chapel; snowdrops shock us with their vulnerability yet resilience; rivers are uncontainable, unstoppable, in turmoil, which leads us to question our own mortality. We must listen to the voices of our ancestors, respect the natural world, revalue ourselves, or face the consequences.

ISBN: 9781911469964For publication September 2025

12/08/2025

Nightsongs for Gaia
by James Byrne
New and Selected Poems
Nightsongs for Gaia: New and Selected Poems spans over twenty years of James Byrne’s poetic practice. Accomplished in both formal and innovative modes, Byrne’s poetry is visionary, attentive and curious, encapsulating a global sensibility. Selecting from seven full collections and various pamphlets, Nightsongs brings together works unavailable in England until now. Here, we encounter a poetics that works with communities to further consider a sense of self and otherness and is unique in its musicality. Nightsongs celebrates the work of one of the most gifted poets of his generation.

"James Byrne's poetry has always been lyrically complex, with a voice that is singular and instantly striking. What particularly strikes the reader of his Nightsongs for Gaia: New and Selected Poems is its capaciousness. This book takes us on a journey from his youth, via places of recent conflict such as Myanmar and Libya in a way that few contemporary writers across the globe can match. He makes most poet writers today look like they’re jogging in a bathtub."
- Antony Rowland

"Nightsongs for Gaia presents alchemical fissures of a heart reduced to gold with no other substance to turn (in)to. A fiery presence of augury, of premonition, burns from the outset with a wary flame. Byrne has seen many places, been many things, and undergone visceral self-haunting in many guises. To say the Nightsongs are oracular is to understate the poet's own sense of knowingness. Here, exquisite beauty prevails."
- Kirsten Norrie

"James Byrne’s Nightsongs for Gaia is an extraordinary body of work—restless, urgent, and deeply humane. These poems move fluidly between the intimate and the geopolitical, tracing loss, exile, and resilience with a precision that is both unflinching and tender. Byrne affirms poetry as an act of witness and transformation. This is a vital, necessary collection."
- Aaron Kent
ISBN: 9781911469841

05/08/2025

Did you watch our recent launch of Poems Written Through Barbed-Wire Fences? If not, click the link in story and highlights.
Add Arc Publications on YouTube! 🎙️
https://youtu.be/Xzorbb_GbYM?feature=shared

15/07/2025

𝑁𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐺𝑎𝑖𝑎, by James Byrne, is published today and available through our website: https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/james-byrne-nightsongs-for-gaia-699

25/06/2025

See the full official launch & discussion of 𝑃𝑜𝑒𝑚𝑠 𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑇ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝐵𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑒𝑑-𝑊𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝐹𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzorbb_GbYM

16/04/2025

Three members of Ver Poets have recently published new collections, all of which I recommend. Can the Dandelions Be Trusted? by Katherine Gallagher (Arc Publications, £10.99) In her seventh fu…

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