Deryn Rees-Jones
2021 will mark the seventh anniversary of Pavilion Poetry. Our list is small – we usually only publish three books each spring – but it has been a huge pleasure to see our poets’ careers develop and to win national and international recognition within a relatively short space of time.
Some of the poets we publish are at the start of their poetry writing lives, others already had a strong reputation. So far we have published writers from the UK and the US; and from France/ Lebanon, and Holland in translation. Between them now they have won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Saltire Poetry Prize, the Poetry Book Society Choice and Recommendation, and the Translation Choice; and they have been also previously been shortlisted for, among others, the T.S. Eliot Prize and the National Book Critics Circle award.
Pavilion is an imprint of Liverpool University Press, and each year we work with student interns from the Department of English at the University of Liverpool to bring the books into the world; seeing books through from start to finish, with those students, and my colleagues at the press, is a huge privilege.
As editor I have wanted to offer the poets a secure space to develop their work. The poets we have published so far each has a distinctive voice, but all share a desire to take a risk with form and ideas. I am not much interested in a lyric poetry than leans easily into anecdote; for me what is most exciting about a book of poems is the way it can hold and transform rich and complex experience, however, difficult or challenging.
I have long been an admirer of Bhanu Kapil’s writing. To have the opportunity to develop a UK readership for her work, and to have the very real thrill of seeing How to Wash a Heart evolve prior to publication, has been a joy.
Pavilion’s new titles for 2021 include a first collection by Alice Hiller, a bird in winter, and two second collections from Alice Miller, What Fire, and Sarah Westcott’s Bloom. For more information see https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/series/series-12328/